Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
David Bowie buried up to his neck in the sand after Yonoi got the horn after a peck on the cheek. I don’t remember films especially well. This one I do though.
Bowie’s hunchback little brother with the nice singing voice makes me sad when I think about it. Which isn’t often I’ll admit. I did wonder at the time if I had a little brother who was a hunchback and who could sing like an angel if I’d stick up for him better. Would I go through life with the guilts like David after the schoolyard fags did their worst? Probably.
Is there any reason why you couldn’t just cut the hump off and plane it flat? I’m sure there probably is.
I saw a new bar today in Rathmines called Copán (cop on?). Cocktails €5 all day. I was very tempted to sit there all day and drink cocktails.
I would probably be rewarded in my next incarnation by being born a hunchback with a singing voice like Bob Geldof and a brother like John Terry.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a hunchback out in public, or anywhere else for that matter. I wonder whatever became of them? Could it be that their families are hiding them in attics or basements? Were they were recalled by the government and repaired? Lotta questions, no answers.
The only part of that film that I remember clearly is David Bowie buried in the sand, but I do remember thinking it was better than I expected it to be.
He looked really good, even buried up to his neck.
At least he is ageing gracefully, unlike Elton John, who looks more like a nuisance aul wan every time I see him, and the Rolling Stones, who look like they have been resurrected. I really want them and their pensioner arses to go away.
I love Bowie’s other film from that era, The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is also an excellent book.
All day cocktails sounds like a dream, I can see myself now, tequila sunrise, harvey wallbanger, mojito, all those fruity ones…
But seeing as I’d have to actually get out of the car in Rathmines, it’s never going to happen!
Btw, you’ve obviously missed your vocation, you should have been a hump surgeon.
It’s not too late, ya know.
Too much blood.
Prefer the cocktails.
LL – I saw one recently actually. Can’t remember where though. Maybe they can treat them better as kids or something.
One of my favourite films Ruichi Sakamoto and
Tom Conti were good.
Lawrence van der Poste who wrote the
book was a bit of a guru to the future Charles
de Turd which explains the woolly thinking.
The music is great and when I’m on a drunken
youtube meander I usually come across it at
some point and go of on some great tangents.
I think Bowie is one of the first Renaissance men
of our time.My mum freaked when she saw the
inside of the gatefold of Aladin Sane,too much
androgyny!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWjsT_SJNI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1YkHJJi-tc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkWjsT_SJNI&feature=related
I remember clearly the first time I ever saw Bowie on telly, he was wearing platform bovver boots, skin tight jeans, the orange hair and the make up, of course.
I thought it was a horror film at first, cos the only time I’d seen anything like him was Frankenstein.
My parents were disgusted, tutting and telling me it was all a gimmick. I might have been very young, but I knew they were wrong.
I’ve loved him ever since.
Rathmines has never been a good spot for pubs considering the size of the place and the length of the main street. Slatterys is pretty good but you can never get a few seats that aren’t in the way of everyone walking past.
The rest of the places are barns for country folk to mate in before moving back home to the ploh a’ land to build a large grey plastered eyesore with a rough core driveway.
Slattery’s in Rathmines used to be a decent pub, but the rest are full of culchies and skangers.
Dublin pubs have gone to the dogs since the smoking ban, there’s no atmosphere, even around Grafton Street, where the best pubs were always buzzing at the weekends.
No wonder people stay at home to drink, or socialise in friends houses where they can really relax.
Though I miss the fun of bumping into people you haven’t seen for ages, partying into the night, and even the mad scramble when the pubs all emptied at the same time and buses and taxis all went awol!
Harold’s Cross is another baron spot. An awful dreary place. Odd people too.
Me love Utada and Mr. Lawrence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArPT5qCRPis
I think it might be because of the transient nature of places with loads of flats, tenants always changing, so the bar staff are never friendly because they may never see the customers again.
Also, having lived in Rathmines myself for a few years, there is always a funny suspicious atmosphere in those pubs, a paranoia, and before you say it, it’s got nothing to do with drugs!
Nobody knows anybody, and you always think the guy in the corner looks like a serial killer.
Which he does.
Cos he might be.
Cos you never know.
same as Smyths in Donabate Silla. But they’ve got a fucking excellent jukebox.
Isn’t Rathmines the place where that fine upstanding politician, a man who contributed so much to irish society, a man who when he was minister for justice, under dail privilege, treated frank connolly in an appaling manner, amnner in which you would expect putin to behave, etc, etc, etc
anyhow, isn’t rathmines the place where that despicable cunt michael mcdowell wanted to see as an area full of cafe bars like in barcelona? Is rathmines looking like barcelona these days?
*googles frank connolly+michael mcdowell*
Oh yeah that thing. That was pretty fucking disgraceful. And we lost the Centre for Public Inquiry as a result which was probably the real reason for it.
Bit fucking cold for cafe bars is Dublin. I don’t care what the trendies say. Drinking outside in Ireland is only good for pointy nipple spotting.
exactly my point Crank. I remember last year Dublin City Council decided that it would be a great idea to stop cars going through from Pearse Street through to Dawson Street and make it pedestrian only…thinking back I don’t remember what ever happened this idea. Anyhow. The guy from DCC interviewed on the radio said it works on the continent and he named Barcelona. It pisses fucking rain here every day. the dopey cunts.
vincent browne is bitchin’ tonight
Cafe bars are not a bad idea. I wouldn’t mind some more places like the Spanish tapas bars or little places you get in Italy. They’re as much fun with a group of people and at least you’re getting some soakage in.
€5 a pint of Guinness and no food to be had is getting a bit tired.
Oh that Brian Hayes cunt is on. Fucking hate that soft faced prick.
Jim Walsh (FF Senator) said he’s just back from Switzerland where he was observing how their system of democracy works and he thinks there’s a lot to learn from it. Isn’t that good to know? I assume this was “fact finding mission” paid for by me. What a fucking joke.
There’s already a bloke advocating that from months ago. Fucking hate these cunts who rob other people’s initiatives.
Brian Hayes has taken on the mannerisms of Pat rabitte. and not by mistake. Looks to me like Pat and Brian may be getting lessons from the same charm school
I’d love to see Vincent Browne naked.
So the senator goes off to Switzerland, buys a clock and a bar of Toblerone, looks at their democratic system and comes home saying it’s all great, the man who invented triangular chocolate is a genius.
But who does he tell about the Swiss democratic system? No one. No one in government wants to know what he thinks. If they wanted to know what he thought, they’d have told him what he thought. If they want to know what the Swiss democratic system is like they’ll make their own junket, sorry fact-finding mission.
So well done Jim Walsh, and I still hope they abolish the Senate and the rest of you free-loading cunts.
I’m now going to the scratcher with a naked Vincent Browne vision for company. Shit.
I’d like to see Elaine Byrne naked, making my breakfast after we hooked up at the UCD L&H debates and I said something really intelligent which made her want me most urgently.
*just had to say that to get rid of the VB image…. ah shit*
“I’d love to see Vincent Browne naked.”
Itchy, you’re a sick man.
Anyway, it was Rathgar that MacDowell wanted to turn into Paris, but it was never going to work. There are a few places with tables outside and they do seem to be reasonably busy in the day time, but some have closed up in recent times.
I’d say they didn’t do any business at night, it’s too close to heavy traffic, plus it’s fucking freezing!
Amsterdam has lots of places to sit outside for a drink or a meal, but in the winter the natives are not allowed stand outside after 10 o’clock. But their pubs are tiny inside and not at all comfortable, so they use the street like an extension to the bar.
In the nineties I used crash at a student friend’s
basement flat in Rathmines.There was a bedroom
created from a bathroom in order to fit in an
extra tenant.One slept on a cot constructed over
the bath which was partitioned from the toilet
bowl.The cynical Scot in me said this is a country
run for the benefit of hungry money grabbing cunts
too lazy to work but not above Rachmanism.
What’s new? Certainly not building standards!
The flats in Rathmines were grim all right, good job we were all too stoned most of the time to care.
As usual I forgot to use the odd comma.
You’re right Silla,many a spliff was consumed
on Leinster Road but when I had my infant son with
me en route to Clare from Edinburgh my mates
smoked nothing, a consideration for others not
shown by the gombeen landlords.
At other times I met a lot of kind considerate
strangers who were more than willing to take me
under their wing(s).
It was a microcosmic picture of Ireland.The man
on the street has a regard for his/her fellows
not demonstrated by those who can make a difference.
Sheepshagger that is a great summary of something I’ve been trying to say for ages but not getting the words right. You have.
‘The man on the street has a regard for his/her fellows not demonstrated by those who can make a difference’.
Thats a great description. May be very helpful and ta.
Also I have had a crash course in Irish over the christmas.
It vas a present from mein mot.
I used to like Rice’s at the top of Grafton street. One of the barmen there looked like Boris Karloff. Plenty of bumboys there also to have a laugh at – and talk with.
Neary’s was also good for a laugh and a killing – if you were lucky.
“It vas a present from mein mot.” – Surely “meine freundin” ??
Bought a snow plough and a de-icer for the runway on my table just in case the weather is bad on saturday. The poor old terrier still has the head-staggers.
Twenty, you think far too much.
Stay off the sauce for a while ay? :)
Tony Killeen, a retiring FF TD and current Minister for Defence said this morning on Radio 1 that history will look back on the deal that Fianna Fail made with the IMF in a positive way.
Great job!
I was over for a few days between Christmas & New year, the pubs, bars and hotels in Town, Lucan and Blanchardstown that i spent time in with friends reminded me of a sad, badly dressed imitation Croydon…No make that Peterborough on a Wednesday. The Grimmest visit ever. Actively considering doing a tour of Belgium’s fine industrial estates in March.
That is a legacy of the great Fianna Fail TD Liam Lawlor Papalamour. Lucan was his turf. Liam Lawlor, the same man that Bertie Ahern appointed as Chairman of the Dail Ethics Committee.
Great job!
merry christmas mrs drumm
In the same month as he transferred €550 k to his missus’s account ,
“It also emerged at yesterday’s hearing that in December 2008 Mr Drumm received his last full monthly paycheck of €92,000 from Anglo, as well as a bonus of €372,000, which he said covered the previous three years. He received a final paycheck of €86,000 in January 2009.”
still not having paid back the €8.5 millions he owed his employer
““It also emerged at yesterday’s hearing that in December 2008 Mr Drumm received his last full monthly paycheck of €92,000 from Anglo, as well as a bonus of €372,000, which he said covered the previous three years. He received a final paycheck of €86,000 in January 2009.””
As I have stated before, these cockroaches would have been guillotined in gentler times.
I have nothing further to say.
Der Henker
my sister knows the drumms, her kids went to the same school as theirs. they left the country pretty quick smart in the middle of a school term. though I do remember there was an issue over visas that caused them a few heart attacks.
Nice chap Drumm. May have made a bad mistake in the US though as apparently he maxed out a number of credit cards and defaulted on them and a case could be made by the companies that he did it deliberately in the knowledge that he was going to apply for bankruptcy protection in the States.
That could turn awkward for Mr Drumm because of the cases on those issues don’t go the way Drumm hopes then he could e facing fraud charges.
Not a great way to settle into a new society and demonstrate one’s probity either so that may affect his residency status in the end.
I heard he’s a beauty. We all know his type. Mind you, living next door to Ronan Keating would turn any person into a cunt.
Most barristers in Ireland only use their knowledge to fuck people over, set up complicated deals and help big corporates screw customers as opposed to representing people in court. In-depth knowledge of the law is a great tool for cheating people out of what they rightly own.
Dermot Ahern, Brian Leninan, Brian Cowen, Willie O’Dea are four cunts off the top of my head who are solicitors. They never fucked anyone over. They always have the greater good in mind.
I’m playing someone in scrabble on my iphone but I’m using the internet to get all the solutions.
Is that bad?
I bet everyone does that these days
Rathmines is a quare place. A little piece of Dublin 1 squashed between some seriously posh places. There’s a good new pub on Camden Street called Against the Grain, or rather it’s still the same crap L-shaped premises, but they have all manner of tasty beers, ales and stouts. It’s part of a chain that has some pubs in Galway.
And they have this lynx (I think, could be hair gel actually) poster in the jacks, the one with the guy in red all happy and shit, surrounded by guys in blue who are all angry. Anyway one of the blue guys looks like Michael J Fox from the film Casualties of War. I reckon.
Ah to hark back..
“A little piece of Dublin 1 squashed between some seriously posh places. There’s a good new pub on Camden Street called Against the Grain, or rather it’s still the same crap L-shaped premises, but they have all manner of tasty beers, ales and stouts. It’s part of a chain that has some pubs in Galway.
And they have this lynx (I think, could be hair gel actually) poster in the jacks, the one with the guy in red all happy and shit, surrounded by guys in blue who are all angry. Anyway one of the blue guys looks like Michael J Fox from the film Casualties of War. ”
Rices of the Green had all of those characters and more .. in the flesh in those days.
I loved Rice’s, particularly the upstairs lounge which only opened on the weekend.
It always amused me when men would hold open the door for my very cute boyfriend, and then let it go when I was coming in, practically slamming it in my face.
I knew it wasn’t personal.
I don’t think I ever spoke to a stranger in there, but I don’t think most of them had any interest in talking to women!
“I don’t think I ever spoke to a stranger in there, but I don’t think most of them had any interest in talking to women!”
I must have been the handsome chap in the corner smiling at you…
Against the Grain is pretty good actually except for the hipster element in their intensely silly and uncool ensembles.
Where was Rices? (he asks glad to know he’s too young to remember)
Now Bartley’s was another matter altogether.
Spiffing chaps and girls. InDublin in the late 70′s it was the only place to go to watch lesbians preening each other.
Dem were the days.
“(he asks glad to know he’s too young to remember)”
I am glad I AM NOT YOUNG in Dublin nowadays.
No high-tech bollocks, greasy hair and ipods then. The people were.. ahem.. cough.. educated and well-read then. Nothing to beat a Christian Brother’s (Whack!) education.
Bartley’s was overtaken by bikers and students in the late 80s. Had my first Guinness in there. There were some fruity types still up at the bar.
Rices – Where that abortion of a Shopping Emporium is now at the top of Grafton street / King street.
Ah. Was it the old Sinnott’s before they moved into the Shopping Centre?
Nyet.
I’ll bet that’s where the Dunnes Stores drink licence came from. So Rice’s ended up as sheet of paper in Dunnes HQ.
Perhaps, no idea. The whole district had a special atmosphere for us in those days (77-82).
With the shopping malls and junk food places and american this and yankee that, the place has lost its magic. It is dead.
Bartley’s. Can’t say I know it. Or ever heard of it.
And yet my hair is free of product, and my belt is firmly hitched around my waist, as it should be, and not around the top of my legs, as is the vogue with the young lady-boys these days.
So clearly I’m from some nether-generation, post-Bartley’s, pre-emo, and I find myself wondering if my generation dressed in a way that irked our elders. Flares maybe. Adidas shell-toe runners. X-works jeans.
Remember when scumbags were called flecks? And knackers referred to what were essentially goths without the make-up?
Ho-hum, nearly quitting time. Or nearly ‘your contract is terminated’ time. Whichever.
Was never into flares. Found them grotesque. Now Howard Devoto’s leather jacket…
Rice’s was on the corner of South King Street and Stephens Green, and Synotts was next door.
Synotts was a nice pub, frequented by actors and other dramatic types, in more ways than one.
Bartley Dunnes was beside the old Mercers Hospital, on Mercer Street, across the road from that Lemon pub, the Hairy Lemon I think it’s called.
There’s a hotel built where Bartleys used to be.
Anyone remember Kings in (where else) King Street?
It was my favourite pub for agood while, and the first pub I ever saw with sofas in it.
Very posh!
The cisterns in the Ladies loo were particularly handy for nefarious activity.
I always thought that was done on purpose.
The Devil’s Dandruff Silla!Naughty!
Recall being barred from that (Kings) establishment. Toby Juggs was a good (sawdust) place also.
The Toby Jug was a weird place, my friend went in there one day in her school uniform with a note from her “mother” to buy a bottle of wine, and amazingly, they sold it to her!
I was served in there myself in my school uniform, but with hindsight maybe it wasn’t the hardship on the bar staff that I thought it was at the time.
The most interesting thing about the Toby Jug was the guy with no arms who used to drink pints of Guinness, not by drinking them off the bar as you might imagine, but by getting his mate to lift it up for him and then he would balance it on his shoulder and his stump and sup away. Now that’s what I call dedication. Hours of fascinating observation.
One day I went into town to go to the Toby Jug, turned the corner, and it was gone. It had been demolished, and not a scrap was left to remind people of where it had been. It was a very old pub, God knows when it opened.
@Holemaster
The wonders of search machines!
Have a gander here (scroll down to Eamonn Nolan)
http://www.irishhistorylinks.net/pages/Old_Dublin_Black_White.html#EarlyGraftonStreet2
@Silla
old girl, our paths must have crossed sometime! I knew that chap in The Toby as well. Not a very talkative type but gave an added value to the atmosphere.
Less of the old, sweetie, I’ve stopped counting!
Considering that back in the proverbial day, most people who drank around that area knew each other by sight and to say hello to even if they didn’t know them well, the chances are that our paths did indeed cross, Johnnie.
Did you ever frequent Hunters, by any chance?
I think so, yes. Being a young man about town town then, I preferred The International in my latter period, 1983 or thereabouts.
Ah yes, the basement in the International was a nice spot.
Thinking about it, I seem to have spent an unhealthy amount of time in the good pubs of Dublin, maybe I should write a book.
Why not make a pact wid de divil and have yourself moved back to 1977 (with your youth)?
It has often crossed my mind. I do not come across Satan very often to make such a proposal.
As Popeye says, “I yam what I yam”, and you know there’s no going back.
I don’t think I’d really want to, even if I could.
How could one stand to leave one’s youth, and return to reality?
No,good and bad, we’ll just have to muddle on.
No, lock stock and barrel, back to 77 with the innocence and the magic.
I am a romantic, sorry.
Back to the elephant flares with home made inserts, the love beads, the Dandelion Market, the platform boots, Pierres Pool Hall, ashtrays in pubs, long hair for everyone, Jesus sandals, Levi Strauss sacks for school bags, tight denim jackets, fingerless gloves, runes, Tubular Bells, the Baggot Inn, pernod and black, denim waistcoats, Keds, cowboy boots, fur coats, army combat jackets, Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin, The Inter Cert, peruvian leg warmers, Charlie perfume, Anne French cleanser, magic mushrooms, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance et al?
Hmmm, doesn’t sound too bad, now that I think about it.
Good god! Were you a hippy / hipette?
Never ran into any of them in my travels..
Used to drive a Honda 750 though and wear leather jeans. Proper street-cred that was.
Never tried the Anne French stuff though.
Ah well. back to dreaming.
An aside, came across this today in my ramblings –
http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-rte-dialogue-2007-07-28.smil
Interview with my sadly deceased English teacher – a gifted man.
That just about sums it up, a drunken hippie with intellectual pretensions.
Just shows that some things never change, apart from the hippie bit.
“That just about sums it up, a drunken hippie with intellectual pretensions.
Just shows that some things never change, apart from the hippie bit.”
Weren’t we all darlings then.. Enough of this misty eyed retrospection. I must find Satan!