Category: General

Limerick is known as the Treaty City due to stuff that happened a long time ago that was no one’s fault really. That said, I do think that some payback may have occurred today at the hands of an Irish barber. I’m pretty sure I just asked for my hair to be made tidier, and didn’t say “please can you make it look exactly like Hitler’s”?  Anyway, with suitable use of gel, the always-wise refusal to sport a moustache, and taking care not to mention the war, I might just get away with it.

Word of the day is “antimacassar“. Previously known to me as “those stupid headrest doilies”. I thought I’d wash them to see if it got rid of the musty smell in the upstairs sitting room. We now have very wrinkly antimacassars, and I certainly can’t be arsed to iron the feckers. Maybe they’ll flatten as people rub their oily heads into them. I’ve emptied a bottle of Febreeze over the curtains as they’re now my chief musty suspects.

While reading some stories produced by students, I came up with the idea for an exciting new game show format – a televised weekly short story competition.  Bear with me on this.

The cameras could follow the authors day-by-day during the stories’ constructions, building up to their reading out the 3000 words max each Saturday on a prime time TV slot.

Some of the swearing, killing and sexual assaults in the texts might have to be toned down a bit for a family audience, but I think it has legs.

Imagine a panel of critics eviscerating the output of some callow wannabe Saki while the camera cuts to a close-up of the author’s parents in the audience, faces contorted in anger at the injustice of the appraisal of their child’s output.

My working title is “The Great Irish Write-off”, which shouldn’t be confused with what NAMA does.

We went to Ballybunion yesterday to blow the cobwebs away.  If only we could have taken half the contents of the rental property with us – they’re in dire need of it too.

It was mostly sunny but majorly blustery.  Photos here:

Ballybunion September 25th 2016

Some time has passed once more, and I don’t have a load of things to show for it.  I went to an interview for a contract role in Limerick.  It went well, and I’m still hoping to hear back on it – once more the wheels turn slowly.

The chemical treatment of nasty weed things has gone well – they’re looking very unhappy with themselves.  I actually need a good chunk of it to die off before I can tackle the stuff lurking behind it.  There’s a parcel of about 2 acres that I can’t reach at the moment due to weed infestation – clearly there’s no particular need to get at it, but since it’s there it has become a bit of a challenge.  Wading in (perhaps literally if the start of autumn’s rain is a sign of things to come) doesn’t seem like a great idea, especially when the septic tank percolation area is around there too (according to the previous owner’s map).

I tried to light the Aga the other day, and did actually succeed after downloading a manual and playing around with it for a bit.  Playing around involved opening a couple of valves, waiting 15 minutes, then chucking some lit matches in the chamber near to the wick.  I think that’s the gist of what the manual wanted me to do – I got bored after the first few pictures.

Unfortunately things didn’t work out well on that front – Extreme Smoking occurred for a while (which I was sort-of expecting), but then it settled into car exhaust levels of smoking, which it kept at for the next 90 minutes or so until I concluded that:

1. the carbon monoxide alarm in the kitchen wasn’t to be trusted
2. all of the smoke probably wasn’t supposed to come out of the flue box and into the kitchen, and that the traditional means of venting was in fact via a chimney

I then turned the oil off and removed the front of the flue box.  There was no ‘draw’ at all up the chimney – I tried lighting a bit of newspaper and putting it in the flue, but it just sulked down to the base rather than merrily flying up to meet with the crows on the roof.

Phoned the landlord – he wasn’t overjoyed and didn’t sound like he believed me when I said the chimney needed sweeping.  I’m pretty sure that he should have had it done every year anyway as part of the insurance, but he said he’d got the Aga going last year fine, so it must be ok now.  He actually suggested that I try lighting it again.  I respectfully declined the offer to gas myself, however well-meaning it may or may not have been.

He did say he’d get someone to sort it, so looking forward to that.  We’ve got 500 litres of kerosene arriving on Monday, which I’ve worked out should last us until the end of the lease (roughly).  270 Euro, including VAT and delivery… can’t complain too much at that, although I do think it’s poor that there’s quite high VAT on heating fuel here (13.5%).  In the UK I think it’s 5%, which even allowing for the normal difference in VAT levels (20% in UK vs. 23% in Ireland) seems more reasonable for an essential item.

We had an entertaining time when visiting the post office (run by Ireland’s commercial organisation An Post) the other day.  One thing that the keen observer might note when visiting our rental property is the lack of letterbox.  There is a handy workaround for this that has been in operation for years, namely leaving one of the conservatory windows open for the postman to drop stuff through.

The lady at the post office seemed to think that we should try to shift into the modern era, so gave us a leaflet on external mailboxes – 70-odd EUR gets you something both you and the postman can open, but no one else.  We broached the subject with P who has been maintaining the house for decades, to sound him out on whether or not the landlord would be willing to stump up the cash.  He waved his hand dismissively and said “oh no, not at all”.  So that’s that dead in the water!

We did indeed move into the big mad house on Monday.  It’s taken a few days to sort everything out – especially the cobwebs.  The place has a lot of the previous owner’s things still in it, for which we’ve been issued a “use it, don’t break it” instruction.  That didn’t apply to the antique Colt .25 handgun we found in a kitchen drawer, however.  Or at least, we don’t think it did – landlord has taken it away.

Office is now setup, and I have networked the house almost fully using 3 wireless access points and 4 mains network adapters.

My last confession was 11 days ago and these are my sins:

Looks like the mad big house rental thing is a goer, and we’ll hopefully pick up the keys on Monday.

We’re now on a ferry back to Ireland with V’s car packed full of all the stuff we didn’t take the first time.  It was quite nice being back in Harrogate for a week as a kind of tourist – probably the best way of experiencing it, although we couldn’t be arsed to queue to get into Bettys.

Harlow Carr was as great as ever, and it was pleasing to see that they hadn’t built any more structures in the few weeks since our last visit – maybe they’ve got rid of all the trees they didn’t like now.

We got a quote back from the builder to renovate the property in Ireland.  It’s about what we expected, which is to say “a lot”.  Needs a bit of thought before we proceed, but it would be nice to get the roof watertight at least.

… try to rent a large 19th century townhouse with castle views.  Let’s see how this one goes… surely if we attempt enough random manoeuvres one of them will pay off?

Great day at the beach.  Journey home was less good however, as I got a call and it turns out that the cottage we were planning on renting for 6 months has fallen through.  Plan B is now in effect, which is to wonder why we didn’t have a contingency plan before.