First it’s a railway bridge. Then a building in Cork collapses in the middle of the day. Would it be a surprise to find out that the concrete used in all construction was the same kind crap that they use in China to build schools in earthquake zones.
I think we ought be worried. When stuff just starts collapsing for no reason then it’s surely a sign.
I remember collapsing once many years ago. Well, it wasn’t so much collapsing as passing out but it was still quite collapsy. It was in my DJing days and I was working five or six nights a week on Leeson Street, Dublin’s late night drinking zone. It was the only place to get a late drink, licensing laws allowing the sale of wine as long as you were serving food (and baskets of cocktail sausages and chips and deep fried mushrooms were haute cuisine down there).
The thing about Leeson Street back then was that you got kinda sucked into it. You’d find yourself down there even when you had a night or two off. Your body-clock so fucked from being awake until 6 or 7am each working night there was nowhere else to go. You’d flit between clubs, drinking foul plonk or the cheap option of a glass of port. Even now it’s making my bowels and my taste buds scream.
Anyway, one night, in the club nearest to Leeson Street bridge on the left hand side of the road I was sitting having a drink with fuck knows who. Weirdos, I can tell you that, because Leeson Street was full of them. Yes, customers were weird but there was a class of lunatic working down there I have not encoutered since.
I don’t know what I was drinking, some filthy Valpolicella perhaps, when all of a sudden many nights of working and being out drinking that muck caught up with me. Vision blurred, that weird buzzing started in my head, voices and music faded away in the background and it went black.
The voices and music faded back. There was that awful sensation where you have no idea where you are, then the even more awful sensation when you realise exactly where you are.
I was flat on my back, in the middle of a Leeson Street club, and everything else was just carrying on as normal around me. Nobody came over to see if I was all right, having toppled backwards off a high stool. Nobody asked if I felt ok. I left the club a few minutes later and I’m pretty sure my Leeson Street career came to an end shortly afterwards. I no longer wanted to spend time in such a soulless, empty environment.
Collapsing is a sign. Mark my words.
I remember i went blind for a moment.
But it wasn’t from pure booze, it was that plus watching tv on the ground and then getting up too quickly.
freaked the shit out of me though.
i dont like any word that end in ‘lapse’
I passed out from listening to a really boring bloke talking an inch from my face in a hot stuffy pub.
Emm… under the guise of ‘the collapse of Irish street and other entertainment’, I would like to highlight two things I consider to be a complete sham.
1. The band ‘Madness’. Fuck those cunts, and fuck that self-satisfied prick Suggs. You had two songs mate! How the FUCK have they been around for 50-odd years because of it? They’re at the picnic so it’s very vaguely relevant.
2. Those complete sham-hole motherfuckers who dress up as native americans with a sound system before mumbling out some nonsense about ‘passing deer / running river’ as they twoot reed-y garbage through their no doubt Mexican peace-pipes. I say we give these cunts some swine-flu ridden blankets before putting them to work repairing our railways, which we need now more than ever.
Now to move away from ‘collapse’ and into ablutions – which is always relevant here – I think the men among you might be interested to read that I took a piss in the Rolls Royce of Urinals last night. For this experience you need only visit the Sackville Lounge off O’Connell street.
Descend the steep, long stairway at the back of the lounge, guided by a filthy wooden rail that has not seen the lick of a cloth since civil war times and hang a short right into antiquity. There before you range two magnificent urinals that proudly stand a full four feet into the air. Great, sweeping columns of porcelain dash bold, gothic lines of imperial signature in a salute to a time when Ireland was probably England.
Here, mark you, is an esteemed place to empty the bag. Here is a toilet and experience from which one emerges a better man. Mighty respect must go to craftsmen who can transform the grubby necessities of daily life into a symbolic, colonial tour de force. Hats off therefore to:
Shanks & Co. Ltd
Patentees
Victorian Porcelain
Barrhead.
The Sackville Lounge has the mother of all jacks alright. The Coventry City graffiti is a particulary nice touch.
Ehhh… did Madness not have something spectacular like their first 20 singles in the UK top 20?
Is it friday?
It is, Peadar. All day.
And those do sound like impressive urinals. I’m not sure I’d go that far out of my way just have a piss though.
On the subject of side-effects of excessive alcohol intake. Does anyone suffer from The Fear? By The Fear I mean that nameless sense of foreboding and dread that physically torments your exhausted body after a couple of nights heavy drinking. I pretty much cannot drink heavily 2 nights in a row anymore without spending a mostly sleepless night (usually a Sunday) in bed, bathed in my own sweat and tormented by fevered dreams of the most darkly masochistic kind. A lot of my mates are the same. It’s not cool.
I saw a dolphin eating a breakfast roll a few days ago in Cork.
yeah i know the fear, not nice.
Welcome to your thirties, Ahab. Sadly, guinness disproportinately contributes to the fear.
I always thought the fear was when you woke up the next day wondering what exactly had happened the night before.
I just turned 27. I first experienced it about 3 years ago after a particularly disgraceful weekend. It has been a presence ever since. I can feel it lurking in the shadows…
I had the pleasure of a piss in the Sackville Lounge only recently. It’s like finding a lost piece of the London Underground.
I still rate the Shelbourne hotel as having the most luxurious gents restrooms.
Ah yes, The Fear.
Haven’t met that particular beast for some time.
Not a pleasant experience.
Here’s a clip from Withnail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_hyG0uZMjo
Well I suppose the fear only really starts to affect behaviour when you start your thirties. I no longer drink heavily both nights because the fallout just isn’t worth it. Jesus, that’s bent.
I like nothing more than a bit of the auld Late, Late and maybe, if she lets me, an extra handful of popcorn before she throws me out of the room so she can put veg inside herself.
After London had chewed me up and spat me out one weekend last August, I spent a terrifying evening in Gatwick airport waiting for a delayed flight and discovering that the more alcohol I consumed, the more it sedated my Fear. I then realised that this is what they define as alcoholism. I have recently been forced to go down the Late Late/popcorn route myself.
There’s definitely more to this business of random collapse than meets the bleary eye. Bridges and buildings, people in general, all falling down, all giving up the ghost. Little chunks of Ireland breaking off and drifting off into the ocean, settling out somewhere near the North Atlantic Ridge. Chasing Atlantis. A northside bridge heaves and yawns before finally just giving up and sinking into the estuary, desperately trying to drag the general public down with it into the silt and filth.
I mean seriously. If a previous generation of men could give us the Parthenon, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, not to mention the smooth perfection of an Armitage Shanks porcelain urinal and all the man-made wonders of the world are taken into account with it, what else can one believe? It’s Armeggedon? The end is nigh?
I get a Truman Show type fear. Like somewhere out there there’s a builder/developer with a God complex, randomly toppling structures hither and tither, watching all this on a sky-sized plasma screen, laughing his hole off, waiting to see how much more we can take.
I usually drink a bottle or two of wine watching the late late show and it gets better as it goes on and I’m usually terrified by the end
Oh the Fear… One heavy night does it for me now…
Speaking of Leeson street, I used to work up that direction, and many is the night I ended up drinking plonk in Legs.. To what end I am not sure because the drink was rotten and there were only weirdos and wankers… The fucking DJ’s were always a bit strange too…
All fucking djs are strange
what is a DJ ?
Shoulda hung the blessed Dj.
I did a bit of DJing at Strings, the first one on the corner at Lower Hatch Street. They actually fancied their nitespot as something of a cut above the rest. Run by an Italian geezer, Germano, and some ‘ho from up north. Used to get quite a few priests in there at night..but never thought too much about it at the time -priests in a sleazy niteclub. But for sure the worst part was having to play ‘Born In The USA’ and ‘The Whole Of The Moon’ on a near constant rotation. Don’t blame the DJ, blame the assholes who drink the filthy overpriced plonk and stand screaming over the DJ booth to hear Bruce one more time..
Fuckin’ Germano. I remember him. I once had to go to their ‘office’ on Parnell St. ‘The Italian Food Import Company’, for some reason or other. Can’t remember now. Just remember feeling nervous because of the two huge Italian guys that were there with some barrels of olive oil and a couple boxes of pasta around to make it look like a normal place of business.
And you’ve captured the DJ experience beautifully. I worked in about 5 or 6 different clubs, you weren’t always behind the bar either which made for more fun.
What was that one over the other side of the street..Boss Hogs, or Big Balls or something like that..? Fucking disgraceful shithole, totally Jurassic vibes from the females in there..
Buck fucking Whaleys, that was it! Man, I did a few weeks in there. I only ever brought ten or twelve records in with me too. You wouldn’t need more than that. By the way, he drinks in Sheehans on Chatham Street these days. Sorry, these mornings. In case you’re interested..
Buck Whaley’s, Jesus. It was Cats beside it that was the real den of iniquity.
As far as I know Germano owns Pizza Stop down the little lane between Catham St and Harry St.
He does, that and several other little gold mines in the area. I worked for him again in a different capacity just a couple of years ago. Do you know, they made him some kind of ‘Honorary Citizen’ a year or two ago..for serving pizza to Bono and Twink? Just about sums it all up really.
I also seem to remember him going out with a girl who used to work in one of his clubs, a lot younger than him. She was a year behind me in college.
I’d say he had his greasies down a fair few pairs of the staffs St.Bernards pink knickers back in those days. The whiff of aftershave off the bloke was overpowering; sure you wouldn’t need to drink the plonk at all if he was standing nearby..
Germano?,Twenty,he married that young girl you mention,couple of kids ‘n all,I did some work for him last year,found the geezer quite alright as it happens[he paid up,no bother},and she was a lady too,so there ya go…and Mowl,the bang of aftershave still there…
Blue Stratos
Megan Fox anyone?
http://www.wwtdd.com/wp-content/uploads/2000/08/7wonderwoman.jpg
In fairness to the bloke, I had a similiar experience. When the work was done, he handed me the cash in a sealed envelope, refused an invoice, and we drank a toast of his best red to his honorary status. He waxed lyrical about the Irish, and I guessed time had mellowed the dude. Or maybe it was the heavy scent of his aftershave was finally getting to his head.
I opened the envelope later, and he had tipped me an extra few bob. I felt quite moved by that, and yet somehow violated too. Weird.
I don’t like any word that ends in “lapse,” either. Relapse, synapse, collapse … um … relapse …
Prolapse …
Saw a picture of rectal prolapse in a medical paper once. Truly horrible.
See MS Poland went off the reservation there yesterday?
http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/27/microsoft-poland-subsidary-guilty-of-racism/
heh, saw that. Funny.
If you Google ‘weightlifer prolapse’ you’ll also find a picture you probably won’t enjoy. Goes without saying it’s NSFW
Twenty Major Says:
August 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Prolapse …
Thats the one
Ah the fear, its actually vitamin B dificiency caused by the the drink. Eat a heap of beans, specially kidney beans. But baked beans on toast’ll sort you right in a few hours as opposed to a day and a half
thats incredibly useful information
Jaysus, a heap of pints and then a heap of beans the next morning. Fucking hell, I’d need to wear a gas mask in the car on the way to work
Ian Brown knows all about the fear.
Thanks for the advice, Clownshoes. I’ve also heard that when you get massively pissed your brain stops producing adrenaline. When you become sober again, it compensates and tries to replace it by producing loads of it. This apparently is what makes you feel like every cell in your body is dissolving with anxiety.
“I saw a dolphin eating a breakfast roll a few days ago in Cork.”
Brilliant
I’ve got the fear now. Went to coppers for the first time in about 10 years last night and the self loathing is eating me up inside
The fear of having contracted Aids is a different fear
Megan Fox. What a breakfast.
And here was me waiting for the usual pun on the end :D
Time-lapse?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OJ73BJheBA
Ah the fear, many years ago i met up with some friends and went on a bender for 3 nights, on the 4th day i had to catch a plane back to NJ. I almost never got on the plane, i was stuck in the airport and actually thought i was dying. I had the shakes, sweats and felt like i would pass out. i bought a snickers and a bottle of water got on the plane and did not move for 2 hrs. Words can not describe the fear and panic i felt being trapped on the plane. I managed to get home and spent 4 days in bed (2 with no sleep). I actually asked the wife to bring me to the hospital! Ever since then i cut myself off after 2 good nights.
Peckerhead, you’re a sadistic cunt. I WAS enjoying a cheese sambo
I spent 14 hours feeling trapped on a flight from Aus to Europe due to the fear,and am now terrified to fly because of that experience. Thanks for the hints lads.