The Bolted Nut

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Diver does his bird

It's a little-known fact that the titles to these rants are actually hyperlinks, and if you click on the title of this entry, it will take you to a story on RTE's website. This dude called Diver killed his wife, and got a life sentence, as you do. See here:

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2000/11/18/current/ipage_9.htm

Apparently he 'had nothing left to give her', according to his lawyer, quoted here:

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2000/10/11/current/ipage_16.htm

Son he gave her the chop. As you would further do, without much ado.

Now, due to some investigative bungling by the boys in bull's wool, out he comes again, a free man. Better that a hundred criminals should go free than one innocent man go to jail, say those who advocate a liberal justice system, and Diver is one of the hundred.

Now, here it gets beyond being just funny, and into the realm of the truly bonkers. Diver buys a catapult, and shoots things at his neighbour's shed. The neighbour being an average clever Dublin sort of chappie rigged up a DIY CCTV system and recorded the bould Diver with smoking gun, or the catapult version thereof. Note the complete lack of bulls wool in the evidence-gathering phase of this investigation. No-one dead, only a vexed neighbour. And what does Diver get?

Jail.

He kills his wife and he walks, he fires things at a shed, and he gets jail. Thank God and the depressive democrats for our liberal justice system.

Nuts

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

My Portugal phone

I promised some more on the matter of phones and cars.

The ban on using a phone whilst driving hits new depts of insanity. Driving carefully behind a squadcar today, what do I see? Crimestoppers - ring 1800 25 00 25. On a squad car, driving along a busy road. Now, If I was a painter, I'd have a script on my van. Nuts the painter, ring 1800 25 00 25 for a free quotation yadda yadda yadda. In the hope that some sad bugger would ring, based on the display of the info. Now, applying the same logic to the display of telephone numbers on a garda patrol car operated by the traffic corps, what I saw was an invitation to break the law.

Check this link and note the phone number:

http://www.garda.ie/angarda/vehicles/jeep.jpg

I wonder if the drug squad cars drive about with a sign saying Go on, have a rollie?

And, on the roadside, are a whole bunch of signs also asking the honest joes of Ireland to report traffic violations on the wing. This in a country where the universally popular practise of flashing oncoming cars means there's a motorbike cop behind the next furze bush half a mile ahead of you. So what do you do? 'hello Sergeant, I want to report a serious crime. The fella in the car that just passed me was on the phone, so he was, the dangerous hoor. Where am I now? Well, I'm about five mile from where it happened. Well, I'm six mile from it now. Seven, maybe eight. Can you ring me back, Sergeant, my pipe is quenched and I must light it again. Thanks very much.'

What is honest joe supposed to do, even if he does see a mass murder being perpetrated in a Mini on the motorway? Wait until he sees a phone box?

It calls for joined-up thinking, which doesn't permeate decision taking in this green and pleasant land, not yet by a long shot.

Nuts

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Duality, double-chilled

This blog is back on the air again after routine maintenance, particularly a full lubrication service. I don’t think I got particularly drunk, but opinion on that point varies. I was sitting alongside Five-Foor Sailor in the pub and she sang Slievenamon four times. Or so I thought. The morning after, she denied ever singing it at all, or even knowing it. ‘Slievenamon? What the fuck is that? Don’t know it at all. I NEVER sing Slievenamon. You musta bin’ paralytic’’.That kind of an unconvincing line. Sloop John B maintained she sang six full renditions, and a few odd fragments. All I can say is that the pint in the west of Ireland is nearly as good as in my favourite hotel in Glin. Which is extremely good indeed. And the Black Bush is always good intransigent whiskey wherever you get it. Pure spirit of Drumcree.

Anyway, since I went to the new Doolin cave in Clare and saw all those phonographers in action, I’ve been pondering the dearth of truly successful dual-purpose devices that have ever been on the market. By that I mean things like clock-radios, Swiss Army penknives, and so forth. Except there’s no so forth. Once upon a time you could even buy a vacuum cleaner (no free product endorsements here, take note) that doubled up as a paint sprayer, so that you could clean the house and re-spray the car, if you really wanted to impress visiting relatives.

The sheer nonsensical ridiculousness of the camera-phone is matched only by the refrigerators with televisions in their doors. Now I could see some sense in having the television inside, so you could munch on a ham sandwich and slug a bottle of beer while you watched the Israelis shelling South Lebanon on Sky News. But what the fuck would you do with a television on the door? Invite you girlfriend round for a lobster and Chablis supper, and snuggle up watching the telly in front of a nice cold fridge? Not likely. ‘Fuck off’, she’d most likely say. ‘It’s the whole works – briquettes, doo-dah, de-doo music or nothin’.

You don’t believe me? Then Google for ‘fridge television’ and just see what you’ll get on one pull of the net. You’ll see all about this model, for a handy six grand:



And this is what it does, according to its maker:

Watch TV, listen to music or surf the internet using this titanium finish, state-of-the-art fridge freezer. It’s the ultimate in kitchen technology with a built-in MP3 player for downloading and playing music from the internet, e-mail and video mail using a built-in camera and microphone. It even has full internet access so you can re-stock the refrigerator on-line or check on the latest news and weather - all without leaving the kitchen. And it’s great for storing food too. It has a 506 litre capacity fridge and 310 litre capacity freezer, and a fully electronic temperature control system, which cools each compartment evenly. What’s more, it has a chilled water and ice dispenser, it diagnoses minor faults on-screen and has a contents page for entering and monitoring food content and expiry dates.

It diagnoses minor faults.Most merciful Jesus! What about when it develops major faults? Who’s diagnosing those? Some shagger in a dirty Citroen van charging the price of a full criminal defence? ‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the fridge. The minor fault diagnoser web interface module is bollixed, and that’s a major fault. The parts alone are fifteen grand.’ One of those lines. But look closer. It has a microphone, speakers and a camera. Remember Bill Shatner in Star Trek? ‘Computer – how many gigalightyears an hour are we doin’ at the moment?’ Well, you could say ‘Fridge, who drank all the fuckin’ Lidl cider in the yellow cans?’ , if you had a GRD267DTU. And the fridge is likely to say coolly, fuck off you sweaty bollix, you did.

If it were up to me, I’d be thinking along the lines of combining a ride-on lawnmower with a DVD player. You could drive hypnotically up and down the lawn, watching your favourite movies. If you had a few Playstation games, you could even try to get a teenager to do it. Go further, and combine a GPS, a SATNAV and a ride-on lawnmower, and you could really relax. You could programme in a waypoint wherever the barbecue is stashed. Now, the clever part would be to interface the ride-on with the talking fridge, so that you could stop off at the fridge for a can of cider after mowing the lawn. As you do.

Now I’m off to search the web for a fridge with a tap of draught cider and a cigar humidor. Could really use one of those.

Nuts

Thursday, August 10, 2006

WTF is a Hasselblad Nut?

Since writing my few scattered thoughts here on Pol an Ionán, the Nut house has been bombarded with queries. What the fuck is a Hasselblad or words to the like effect. Mistake on my part, to assume that everybody has heard of the best Swedish camera in the world.

So, for the avoidance of all doubt, here is what a classic Hasselblad looks like, in case one falls out of the pocket of anyone walking in front of you going down a cave in Clare.



They are extremely good cameras, so good they were the ones chose by NASA for the moon trips way back when I was a younger nut. They were therefore the cameras used to take this picture, one of the most famous images ever made:



However, such is the way of the world that having been in the film camera business for a hundred years (literally) they have recently reduced their film camera production and are now mostly making digital cameras.

Just by way of a point of clarification.

There will be no posts for the next three days because I will be drunk. And that is a perfectly acceptable excuse in any Irish Court: see Bocktherobber’s blog.

Good evening.

Nuts

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Pol an Ionán, or Doolin Cave

There’s a cave in Clare now called Doolin Cave, the entrance to which is and was in a field once owned by Paddy Woods. I say that because the entrance has been moved. The cave used to be known as Paddy Woods’ Hole by an American friend of mine noted for his acidic wit, who enjoyed his private jokes at the expense of those less travelled than he, in this instance those who had not heard of the Woods’ Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Massachusets, generally referred to without offence as Woods Hole.

Not being native of these parts, he was somewhat insensitive to the lesser joke inadvertently played on Paddy Woods, who is in all respects a decent chap who drinks an odd pint and bothers no-one, leaving all his listeners bemused as to why the yank should insult Paddy Woods. Or his hole either. All of which proves that wit doesn’t cross water very well. Pol is the Irish word for cave, also pluais which nobody uses.

The cave was better, more widely and indisputably more accurately known as Pol an Ionán, and so it appears on maps.

Funny word, bemused. Does it have an antithesis? Amused is not the opposite of bemused. Another funny word like that is ‘disgruntled’. Now, if it had an antithesis, it would be gruntled, would it not? And that is easy to define. Imagine a troupe of marauding Vikings, sailing up the Shannon to maraud Ireland yet again. They see a religious institution – they pounce, drive off the cattle, drink all the liquor and so on. As you do. Now, if it turns out to be a monastery, they’re disgruntled. But… if it turns out to be a convent, it follows logically that they’d be gruntled, would they not? Back to the ship, lads. Better luck next time. 'Nother fuckin' monastery. We're all feeling disgruntled. Could be worse. If it was priests or christian brothers, we'd be buggered entirely. There might be another convent around the next bend in the river.

Back to the cave. In this cave hangs an enormous stalagtite. It has been known for many years that it was there, since 1952 in fact, but only a few truly brave and motivated people ever got to see it. Fewer still managed the considerable feat of photographing it. One was a deceased friend of mine, who put his Leica R5 camera in an ammunition box and pulled it behind him with a string, crawling three hundred feet through a tight passage with a stream rushing through it. It matters not whether it was in his face, because he came back out the same way, which was the only way, but it was in his face going in. Imagine crawling into a river, a few hundred feet underground. With a treasured camera, if nothing else. And a flash, and lights, and all the rest. My late friend took dozens of wonderful photographs like this, which appears on the website of a nearby guesthouse.



(Note: I don’t know who took this fine picture, happy to publish and give the considerable credit due etc., please use the comment facility if you know)

Paddy Woods sold the field to people who have now dug through hundreds of feet of limestone and ten solid years of bureaucracy to open the cave to the paying public. They were obliged by the experts to dig a vertical shaft some distance from the stalactite. They dug it with a mini-digger, round and round in circles through solid limestone. They lined it with pre-cast concrete things, like the London Underground. They more or less made a circle of the concrete things in the field, and dug under them until they dropped.Then they placed another circle of concrete things on the first, and dug again until they dropped. And so on. For years, until they got down to the level of a cave passage leading to the stalactite. It cost millions.

Now a digression. Where the fuck would you find an expert on digging tunnels vertically to see the biggest free-hanging stalactite in the Northern Hemisphere when you needed one? Answer: Your local Council Offices. They have experts on everything, waiting to be asked. They advertise and recruit them. Clare County Council – Wanted, Large Free-hanging Stalactite Expert, experience of vertical tunnelling in the Burren with a mini-digger desirable, salary commensurate with experience, Clean license essential, Bit of Gaeilge great too for dealing with cranky fuckers, Dutch or Swedish accent best of all, good prospects of promotion to Senior Executive Free-hanging Stalactite Expert for the truly asinine. Clare County Council is an equal opportunities employer. So if your name is Joyce and the word Bay appears in your address followed by a number, or alternatively care of a post office somewhere, and you are a blind deaf dyslexic black paraplegic with a peanut allergy and are in receipt of a lone parents allowance ( evidence must be produced) come on and join a vibrant team of dynamic dunderheads bent on destroying dolmens and whatever the fuck else. You know the type of thing.
They’re not overworked, so whenever they get a guy willing to spend a few million improving County Clare and educating the masses, they spend ten years fucking him up if they can. When they feel like a break, Dúchas take up the cudgels in their place.

Anyway, I visited the cave last week. There’s nothing in Paddy Woods’s field only a bit of gravel and chippings to make a car park. There’s no gift shop. There’s no coffee shop. There’s no ticket office. Just two Clare fellas, one drives the minibus and the other fella has a flashlamp in his hand and he does the tours. In you go and he locks the gate because there’s nobody to keep out the wanderers, but he shows everybody inside where the key is, in case of crises. Like a fire in a cave. Simple, blunt but brilliant.

Clare fellas are great. There is a flinty honesty in their character. It is so bloody hard to belt a living out of bare rock and nice flowers, they leave screwing Dubs to the Kerry people. It’s just too easy for Clare people so they don’t bother. They’re all called T. J. or P. J. and they all have a few bullocks in a little field somewhere that they go and see every day. They all drink pints in the same pubs. Donoghue’s, the Roadside, the Hydro, d’Imperial, Monk’s, the Castle. Any castle at all will do, because you’re never very far from one in Clare. Next time you’re anywhere north of the Fergus, say ‘Hallo P.J., will you come for another pint in the castle?” to a total stranger and he’ll say “Well I’d love to but I’m only just after one and I have to check my few bullocks I think wan of ‘em has red water lucky if ‘tisn’t two and I have to go to a funeral in Enistymon later on a fella next door to the wife’s brother that’s dead I can’t know what’s this his name is again so I must go home and get washed up and put diesel in the car and there’s two funerals in Enistymon tonight so it’ll be busy maybe the next time?” while he’s figuring out who the fuck you are and where did he meet you.

These two guys running the Doolin Cave are typical Clare fellas.

The commentary is genuine, not scripted. Con, the Clare fella with the flashlamp,knows his stuff. He delivers it with a quiet passion. An ordinary decent Clare guy who bothered to learn it because he wanted to know it. He knows his rocks and he knows his cave. No bullshit names for the calcite formations. No bullshit bogus bear bones. No bullshit shaggy dog stories. No bullshit sound effects. No bullshit period.
His calm care and concern for visitor safety is uncontrived. He’s not thinking about claims. He just wants you to have a good experience.

I’ll say no more. Go and see Doolin Cave, Pol an Ionán, Paddy Woods’s Hole. Changing the name to something more marketable in an English-speaking world is a nothing.

Only one thing. Like the plot of the Titanic (ship sinks) you know you are going to see the great stalactite eventually. So at the appointed time the guide says ‘ye can all take a few photos now if ye like’ and whipped on a light and all the tourists whipped out their flip phones! Fuckin’ hilarious! Supposing he said ‘ye can all make a phone call now if ye like’ would they all whip out Hasselblads?

Go see it before they build a coffee shop and a gift shop selling socks with Guinness logos on them. Go see it before they put in a lift and too much coloured lighting. Go see it before they irreparably fuck it all up like is now happening at the Cliffs of Moher. Go and take a camera and a tripod, and a huge flash, and take a proper picture and say a prayer for my old friend who did it the hard way, because he was a Clare man.

These people are deservedly going to be multi millionaires in a few years, because they have a better mousetrap.

The website:

http://www.doolincave.ie

A few pics:
http://www.johnpotter.org/cave/DIT/images/CAVE.jpg
http://www.johnpotter.org/cave/DIT/images/Pol%20an%20Ionan%20entrance.jpg

Though a man build his house in the forest,
If he maketh a better mousetrap than his companions
The world will beat a path to his door.

Warm blooded mammals

Late at night, open ocean. Fourteen nautical miles off the Aran Islands. Pitch dark, heavy mist. Salt and damp in the hair. Cold drops falling from the main. Energy low. Creaking from the cleated spinnaker sheets. Middle of a four-hour reaching run, boat speed 9.4 knots. Hull slapping off the waves from the northwest. Rolling, pitching. Fucking yawing makes me sick. Don’t notice the rolling and pitching but the fucking yawing. Lying third, maybe second, maybe last. No sighting of another boat for the past four hours. Fuck ‘em, that they all may be astray out in the Atlantic someplace. Lights off in the distance, ship or fishing boat probably. Small red light to the East, Inisheer maybe. Isn't there a red light out there where the Lybian dynamite ship ran up on the rocks years ago. Don't know. Only ever sailed past the Islands in daytime going in to Galway. Never landed there. Did you? Yea, in a plane years ago. Mad fucker flying it. Don't know that it's deep enough in by the pier. You don't want to be in the lee of an Island with all those bloody rocks and you not having a clue where the fuckers are. You could get a puff out from the Connemara side that would have you in a minute. Was that landing on grass? Yea. Bloody cold. Go below again if I start shivering. Wishing I were at home with smallfella snuggled up to me. Who volunteers for this shit. Waves spitting at us. Shoes wet from hanging out earlier. Must buy the proper wellies next time I'm in Cork. Bits flying off the tops of the waves. Fuck off. What are ye doing out here anyway. Fuck off, pathetic airbreathers. Ye left this place ten million years ago and good riddance.

Six torpedos off the aft quarter. White lines of phosphorescence, about a metre under the waves. Closing. Fast and steady. Bearing 195 and steady.

Weaving. Red Arrows, eat your hearts out. Synchronised swimming in 3D.

Jumping abeam. Glistening bodies. Intelligent eyes. Hearts lifting. Primeval encounter.

Next business. Peel off at thirty degrees and accelerate away on afterburners.

Torpedos away.

Back to not thinking about the yawing.