Time For The Christmas Cards..

Wishing all blog friends old and new a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 Like Margo said in the Good Life.

" Yuletide felicitations" .

  Come on bloggers let's see your cards.

We bought the card above in The Works in Killarney if you wondered where we got it!

Three Days After The Hiroshima Bomb The Trams Were Up And Running Again.

We watched the brilliant Guy Martin in Japan again on Sunday evening.  He reminds me of my eldest son.  He can turn his hand to anything.  Be it operating a lathe, welding, driving a machine or even forging a sword!

Guy also has the wonderful northern English gift of self depreciating humour and he calls everyone "me duck!", especially when he's purchased something.

In one part of the programme he visited Hiroshima.  We found it very sad and unbelievable what happened there.  Over 60000 people died instantly! Some civilian victims were literally vaporized.  Please God please ensure it will never happen again anywhere in the world.

I watched the election debate an hour earlier and was enormously impressed with the SNP leaders stance on nuclear weapons and how she would never press the button because she couldn't  kill millions of people.  You're right Nicola nobody could do that.  Could they? Would they? Well maybe Trump or Joe Swinson or Bozza Johnson.

He would be better off making the streets in his own manor safe first.  We can't all drive around in a bomb proof Jag with SAS bodyguards can we?  What did your last government do with those twenty thousand police Boris?  So much for the party of law and order.

I think what is even more remarkable about Hiroshima.  They had the trams up and running  again in three days!  To think I complain and moan about the lack of Public Transport in rural Ireland!

At least Ireland doesn't have any nuclear weapons.  I hope she never will!

Amusing Funeral Thoughts.

These are the people who like a “good funeral.”  Some people get out a marker pen and highlight their television programmes for the week.    Funeral  goer looks in their local rag/ newspaper and scour the Obituary columns for their latest funerals for the forthcoming week.   He says something like the following:

"Isn't it strange how people die in alphabetical order?"

 “Lets see.  Tommy Teapot.   I’m sure I once new him?  I think my mothers uncle once bought a cat from his second cousin.  I think it got killed on the railway line.  Or was that my cousin Ernie?  I must go to the funeral.  He was a lovely man, always smiling and would always give you seccies or two’s up on his woodbine.  I see their having the do (Wake) in the White Lion.  I don’t think that I will bother.  They can’t make tongue sandwiches for toffee.”

I once heard a true story of a man who waited for a widow to return from burying her husband.  He offered his sympathy and said:;

“I wonder if you would sell Arthur’s tool shed?  He won’t be needing it any more!”   

Funerals are great places for funeral fans.  They can also get a warm a bite to eat and a nice cup of tea afterwards. 

You even get priest or vicars that make you laugh:  I once went to my aunt Nellie’s funeral.  The vicar, who had never met her.  Remarked on what a wonderful woman ELSIE was.  He couldn’t even remember her name.  It’s the only funeral I have ever been to when the congregation laughed!

Christmas New Potatoes Progress.

Thought l would show you how the new spudatoes are growing.  The  haulm or foliage look very healthy and it's looking good for Christmas  dinner if not before.  It's  amazing what a microclimate is created with a bit of plastic.  God bless the polytunnel!

We recently  watched  Alan Titchmarsh harvesting new potatoes in the summer and placing them in an empty biscuit tin and replacing the tin lid and planting them in the allotment until Christmas.  Sounds a good idea.  Anybody had success with the biscuit tin new potatoes planting method?

I know quite  a few readers have veg plots and I thought I  would show you how the spuds are doing.  The shrub and perennials cuttings are also doing well and you can still see KALE growing in the right hand corner of the olde polytunnel.  There's only me who eats it.  All I get is pull a face and "me not like" when I mention or bring it into the kitchen.  Think I won't  bother growing it again.

So what you having with the new potatoes on Christmas day Dave?  We have decided to have striploin steak and a all day buffet, "help yourself" menu with dishes full of sprouts and carrots and pigs in blankets, home made sherry trifle, sausage rolls, just general buffet stuff.  No Turkey though.  I hate left overs.  So what will you be eating on Christmas day?  Anybody growing new potatoes at the moment?  The Brussels are nearly ready too.

My Saturday Night Telly Thoughts.

Thanks for your comments on the last post.

Saturday Night Telly Thoughts. ( Anybody under forty five may not remember some of the programmes on UK television!)

What ever happened to Seaside Special and The Grumbleweeds  Radio Show on Saturday nights?  They were fun when I was growing up in the Seventies and eighties.  Then it would be Starsky and  Hutch or Kojak.  Followed my the News and Match of the Day. 

I often fell to sleep waiting for my mum to bring back something from the chip shop.  I never understand why they always gave me a pile of newspapers?

 Once I remember my mum and dad coming back with my dad’s rather posh female cousin and her even posher fiance.  Posh fiance attempted to wake me up to eat my chippy supper.  

My father thought that this would not be a good idea.  I would turn into a wasp if I was disturbed whilst dreaming of Wonder Woman. 

“Nonsense”

Said posh fiance. 

"I’ve had lots of experience in my time dealing with children”. 

He tried talking softly in my ear:

“Come on Davy boy wake up”. 

I thought:

“Why does he suddenly have an Irish accent?”     

I was not rousing from my slumber.    Posh fiance begins to shake my arm.  I suddenly wake up sounding like a leprechaun with a Poteen induced hangover:

“Piss off, piss off leave me alone!” 

Posh guests were not impressed, and  they never visited us again.  But what’s that got to do with the X Factor?  Absolutely nothing.  But it describes my Saturday nights when I was young. 

I quite like the X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.  Well apart from Mickey Most or is it Simon Cowell?  Remember the New Faces?  The idea of finding some new talent from the great “unwashed” is a brilliant idea.  They do find some remarkable talent like Susan Boyle and Paul Potts.  But your not telling me that it’s a surprise when a odd looking person changes into the Next Elaine Paige or Pavarotti?   

They obviously have lots of auditions before they meet the panel? No doubt picking out the most eccentric 'Turns' to appear on the programme.  Any body average looking or acting normal with talent.  Need not bother.  It’s car crash television.  A modern day equivalent of watching somebody in the stocks!    

An old friend once told me he was stood outside the pub having a smoke and he saw two women fighting last night.  It was: 

“You bitch, you slag”.  

They were pulling hair and scratching.  One even started to punch. 

"It was bloody brilliant!.”  

Who needs the X Factor?  Wonder what's on RTE?  Perhaps I should start going to the pub again on a Saturday night?  Fancy a pint? 

The Sheepshead Way In November.

I walked fourteen miles last week.  Not every day or in one hike.  I do it mainly for my back.  I hurt my back many moons ago doing somebody a favour.  Never never try to move a double wardrobe down stairs.  They weigh 500 Kgs and do a great job at crushing people.  Any way I have the war wounds and the Irish inclement weather is great for arthritis.  So to stop the back giving me jip I go on my walking gymnasium.

It's  good  to get off the country roads and the cars and lorries whizzing past me.  Sometimes I listen to Spotify to my favourite Rock bands like Kansas, brass bands or The Beautiful South.  Yep my music taste is very eclectic.

Other times I don't listen and just take in the surroundings.  I reckon God would make a very good artist because he did an excellent job making Bantry Bay.

Some times I get down with the weather and things on the news and then I go for a walk and I fall back in love with rural Ireland.  I am lucky to live in such a beautiful place.  I just wish it didn't  rain so much!

A Song And Video About West Cork.

I always like reading and seeing photos of places where other bloggers live and explore.  West Cork is a beautiful part of Ireland.


A West Cork band have recently made the following video.  It even shows The Shruggs singing in Bantry Square.
Enjoy.