Regards,
djp
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Additional critter cadaver update
Pressed hedgehog just around the corner from Richmond Cross.
If I'd gone any closer to get a better shot, I'd've risked being pavement pizza too.
Not one of Panther's victims, unless he's secretly being taking driving lessons. Mind you, he's such a clever cat, he might just have done that...:-)
Regards,
djp
Friday, June 05, 2009
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
And the ringtone for June 2009 is...
..."Senses Working Overtime" from XTC's best (but not necessarily my favourite) album, ENGLISH SETTLEMENT.
Regards,
djp
Regards,
djp
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Hot day in Birr
Mrs. P and I went up to Birr Castle Desmesne today. First time we'd been there in years and a hot day (by Irish standards) it was too...
I could wax lyrical about the beauty of the place, but maybe I'll just let these pictures do the waxing (oo, er...).
As it happens, Birr is usually one of the coldest places in Ireland in Wintertime...:-)
Regards,
djp
I could wax lyrical about the beauty of the place, but maybe I'll just let these pictures do the waxing (oo, er...).
As it happens, Birr is usually one of the coldest places in Ireland in Wintertime...:-)
Regards,
djp
My Top 10 iPod tracks - 010609
- (2) - '39 - Queen
- (-) - Think - The 5 Royales
- (5) - All My Friends Are Crazy - 500 Miles From Memphis
- (4) - Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
- (-) - Man Become Me - 31Knots
- (-) - Sedition's Wish - 31Knots
- (-) - Every Day - 60 Watt Kid
- (6) - Filling In For Clowns - 7evenwords
- (-) - Across The Fields - 10,000 Maniacs
- (-) - Baby Cakes - 3 Of A Kind
djp
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Truly a worthy candidate for the title "Worst Album Of All Time"...
..."Children Of God" by Swans.
Hard to describe - not exactly metal, not exactly industrial, but quite possibly the worst possible combination of those two musical genres. And the singing - there have been great non-singers in popular music - Joe Strummer, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Marc Almond, John Lydon and Morrissey spring instantly to mind. None of them were technically brilliant vocalists, but they all brought something worthwhile to the table. Not so Michael Gira. Lyrics seem to be terribly clichéd.
An album to avoid, but if you take perverse pleasure in avoiding my advice (as do 99.999% of the world's population), then you can find more information on Swans here...
...although I really wouldn't bother.
Regards,
djp
Hard to describe - not exactly metal, not exactly industrial, but quite possibly the worst possible combination of those two musical genres. And the singing - there have been great non-singers in popular music - Joe Strummer, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Marc Almond, John Lydon and Morrissey spring instantly to mind. None of them were technically brilliant vocalists, but they all brought something worthwhile to the table. Not so Michael Gira. Lyrics seem to be terribly clichéd.
An album to avoid, but if you take perverse pleasure in avoiding my advice (as do 99.999% of the world's population), then you can find more information on Swans here...
...although I really wouldn't bother.
Regards,
djp
Friday, May 29, 2009
I tried, I really tried...
...but I just can't climb ladders anymore. The ladder is too shaky, the ground is too uneven, the wind is too high and I am not the young turk I used to be.
Guess I'm going to have to hit the classifieds and find some guy to clean my gutters for me...
Regards,
djp
Guess I'm going to have to hit the classifieds and find some guy to clean my gutters for me...
Regards,
djp
Friday, May 15, 2009
Vector mildew
Just come back from matching Munster beat Ospreys in their last match of the Magners League. Match report here.
Before the match, the Munster Supporters Choir treated us to a few wonderful numbers, including, in honour of Ospreys, "Bread of Heaven". And while they were singing it and giving it socks, I couldn't help but think of this...:-)
Regards,
djp
Before the match, the Munster Supporters Choir treated us to a few wonderful numbers, including, in honour of Ospreys, "Bread of Heaven". And while they were singing it and giving it socks, I couldn't help but think of this...:-)
Regards,
djp
Critter cadaver update
Looks like a female blackbird to me.
I always feel a little sad when Panther kills birds, especially blackbirds because they have a very musical song and the males are beautiful creatures.
But hey, Panther is only following his instinct...
Regards,
djp
Monday, May 11, 2009
And the ringtone for May 2009 is...
..."A to B" from the Futureheads' debut album. Nouveau post-punk at its finest...:-)
Regards,
djp
Regards,
djp
Friday, May 01, 2009
My Top 10 iPod tracks - 010509
- (4) - Brighton Rock - Queen
- (7) - '39 - Queen
- (-) - Stone Cold Crazy - Queen
- (-) - Don't Stop Me Now - Queen
- (5) - All My Friends Are Crazy - 500 Miles To Memphis
- (6) - Filling In For Clowns - 7evenwords
- (-) - No Way Of Knowing - A. Tent
- (-) - Tell It Like It Is - Aaron Neville
- (-) - The Racing Rats - Editors
- (-) - I've Just Told Mama Goodbye - Hank Williams
djp
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Critter cadaver update
Panther's latest handiwork.
He's a big bugger - look at the length of his tail...
...found with eyes wide open and dew glistening on his whiskers.
Couldn't use my garden grabber to lift him - had to use a spade.
Impressive, huh?
Regards,
djp
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Twenty-one years later...
Yesterday, I went for a bit of a skite up to Northern Ireland. I hadn't been there in twenty-one years...
...last time I was there was in the aftermath of a wedding in Monaghan in 1988. The sister of a friend's wife was getting married there and we were farmed out, accommodation-wise, to one of my friend's relatives over the border in Tyrone.
Although my nationality and my religion of birth should have indicated that I was perfectly safe "up there", I was never more scared of anything in my life. Everybody (almost everybody) looked normal - at the wedding, in the pub, in the homes - and yet things couldn't possibly have been normal under the circumstances. Everybody seemed to be committed to a particular cause, but I got the distinct impression that had one had the inclination to discuss beliefs with people, there would have been some people with whom you just wouldn't have dared have a frank discussion. They had a look in their eyes that indicated that they had either just come back from doing something significant or were planning something equally significant for the next day. Dark and brooding just wasn't in it...
Back in those days, a lot of alcohol would have been consumed, but some instinctive sense of self-preservation meant that I kept a very tight control over what I said and to whom. One particular evening in a pub, one of the more approachable of my friend's relatives asked me what did I "think of the session up here then". I knew exactly what he meant - politics. Luckily for me, there was some guy in the corner belting out rebel songs with a guitar. I commented that "your man had a pretty good singing voice". We both knew that I was evading the real point of the question and the matter was discreetly dropped.
Later on that evening, while taking a comfort break, one took great care not to accidentally bump into anyone on the way in or out of the jacks, for fear that that person might be inclined to take issue with my presence in his local in a manner similar to how he might have taken issue with the presence of foreign troops in his particular "green field". A total exaggeration, I know, but I was rather under the influence and incredibly self-conscious of where I was and what the consequences of talking or acting out of turn might have been.
We spent the night in another relative's house - the wife was nice - the husband had been away all evening at a "significant" funeral. My old car was parked around the back of the house just by the bedroom window. All night I heard strange and troubling noises. It might just have been the dog snuffling around the back yard. Or someone of the other persuasion planting a booby-trap bomb under my Southern-registered car.
I was never so glad to get back to the Republic, bad and all as things were down here at the time. I never told my old man about going up North - years before, he warned me that if I ever went up there, he'd disown me. So if you thought I was nervous about being up there, what must have been going through his mind?
Yesterday, twenty-one years later, I'm standing in a queue, waiting to be served at a car breaker's store. I am surrounded by locals who look just as "normal" as do the folks down my way (which probably means that there's just the same mixture of decent people and gougers as you'd find anywhere). The one thing that's freaking me out is the fact that a dozen people are talking at the same time in the same Northern accent. It reminded me of one time when I was in the departure lounge in Shannon Airport when a planeload of US troops disembarked from a transport flight from Iraq. Two or three hundred troops, males and females, of various ethnic groupings and with some variations in general physical appearance, but all shaven-headed and dressed in desert fatigues. Some are wandering around the duty-free shop, some are in the bar, some are going to the toilet, some are making phone calls. Everywhere you look, shaven-headed, fatigue-clad troops standing, sitting, walking. Like the restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich. Back in the queue in the car breaker's store, the dozen simultaneous voices sounded like the audio equivalent of that restaurant scene.
So what did I make of my brief spell in Norn Iron? Everything seemed fine apart from the brief moment driving through the outskirts of Newry when I passed the boundary of a Loyalist estate with its particular forms of street decoration. I'd only ever seen stuff like that on the telly. It sends a shiver up the spine to someone of my vintage. But things have to be different from the way they were in the last century. When you see people sharing power who were sworn enemies ten years ago, then things must have improved.
Here's hoping, eh?
Regards,
djp
...last time I was there was in the aftermath of a wedding in Monaghan in 1988. The sister of a friend's wife was getting married there and we were farmed out, accommodation-wise, to one of my friend's relatives over the border in Tyrone.
Although my nationality and my religion of birth should have indicated that I was perfectly safe "up there", I was never more scared of anything in my life. Everybody (almost everybody) looked normal - at the wedding, in the pub, in the homes - and yet things couldn't possibly have been normal under the circumstances. Everybody seemed to be committed to a particular cause, but I got the distinct impression that had one had the inclination to discuss beliefs with people, there would have been some people with whom you just wouldn't have dared have a frank discussion. They had a look in their eyes that indicated that they had either just come back from doing something significant or were planning something equally significant for the next day. Dark and brooding just wasn't in it...
Back in those days, a lot of alcohol would have been consumed, but some instinctive sense of self-preservation meant that I kept a very tight control over what I said and to whom. One particular evening in a pub, one of the more approachable of my friend's relatives asked me what did I "think of the session up here then". I knew exactly what he meant - politics. Luckily for me, there was some guy in the corner belting out rebel songs with a guitar. I commented that "your man had a pretty good singing voice". We both knew that I was evading the real point of the question and the matter was discreetly dropped.
Later on that evening, while taking a comfort break, one took great care not to accidentally bump into anyone on the way in or out of the jacks, for fear that that person might be inclined to take issue with my presence in his local in a manner similar to how he might have taken issue with the presence of foreign troops in his particular "green field". A total exaggeration, I know, but I was rather under the influence and incredibly self-conscious of where I was and what the consequences of talking or acting out of turn might have been.
We spent the night in another relative's house - the wife was nice - the husband had been away all evening at a "significant" funeral. My old car was parked around the back of the house just by the bedroom window. All night I heard strange and troubling noises. It might just have been the dog snuffling around the back yard. Or someone of the other persuasion planting a booby-trap bomb under my Southern-registered car.
I was never so glad to get back to the Republic, bad and all as things were down here at the time. I never told my old man about going up North - years before, he warned me that if I ever went up there, he'd disown me. So if you thought I was nervous about being up there, what must have been going through his mind?
Yesterday, twenty-one years later, I'm standing in a queue, waiting to be served at a car breaker's store. I am surrounded by locals who look just as "normal" as do the folks down my way (which probably means that there's just the same mixture of decent people and gougers as you'd find anywhere). The one thing that's freaking me out is the fact that a dozen people are talking at the same time in the same Northern accent. It reminded me of one time when I was in the departure lounge in Shannon Airport when a planeload of US troops disembarked from a transport flight from Iraq. Two or three hundred troops, males and females, of various ethnic groupings and with some variations in general physical appearance, but all shaven-headed and dressed in desert fatigues. Some are wandering around the duty-free shop, some are in the bar, some are going to the toilet, some are making phone calls. Everywhere you look, shaven-headed, fatigue-clad troops standing, sitting, walking. Like the restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich. Back in the queue in the car breaker's store, the dozen simultaneous voices sounded like the audio equivalent of that restaurant scene.
So what did I make of my brief spell in Norn Iron? Everything seemed fine apart from the brief moment driving through the outskirts of Newry when I passed the boundary of a Loyalist estate with its particular forms of street decoration. I'd only ever seen stuff like that on the telly. It sends a shiver up the spine to someone of my vintage. But things have to be different from the way they were in the last century. When you see people sharing power who were sworn enemies ten years ago, then things must have improved.
Here's hoping, eh?
Regards,
djp
Monday, April 13, 2009
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
And the ringtone for April 2009 is...
..."Robot" by The Futureheads, from their self-titled debut album. Great stuff!
Regards,
djp
Regards,
djp
My Top 10 iPod tracks - 010409
- (3) - Float - Zomby
- (1) - Liebesfreud - Zino Vinnikov
- (2) - Dream Dream Dream - Zion De Gallier
- (5) - Brighton Rock - Queen
- (-) - All My Friends Are Crazy - 500 Miles To Memphis
- (4) - Filling In For Clowns - 7evenwords
- (-) - '39 - Queen
- (-) - Man Become Me - 31 Knots
- (-) - Sedition's Wish - 31 Knots
- (6) - Think - The 5 Royales
Regards,
djp
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
And the ringtone for March 2009 is...
..."Helicopter" by XTC. Why this brilliant track was never released as a single, I'll never know...
Regards,
djp
Regards,
djp
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