Sorry I missed you Cllr. Dan Fleming

Cllr Dan Fleming

This message from Cllr. Dan Fleming was stuffed into gates all over my estate this evening. I know they only have so much time on their hands but the letter was rolled up tightly and squashed between the bars on our gate and in the gates of other houses. I’d venture to say that it took as long to roll and fold the letter up as it would to walk to our front door. Oh, and yes, we were in when they “called”. The only other people to stuff literature into our gate are those clothes collectors and they’re possibly more popular than Fianna Fail at this stage.

I’m sure he’s a great guy and he’d have a great chat with you and all that but there’s no sign that he’s a Fianna Fail man. The missing party name strikes again! His website is down but his Fianna Fail page is up however.

I’m still not sure who I’ll vote for but you can hurt Fianna Fail without helping Sinn Fein if you vote carefully.

Tiny Little Kitten

Tiny little kitten

A tiny little kitten wandered into the dog’s kennel this morning and started to meow her heart out. She’s so small I can fit her in one hand. She tried to befriend and approach a local tomcat but he didn’t want anything to do with her. Thankfully Adam kept his distance from the new “baby” and I was able to feed her heavily diluted milk in a syringe.

Not sure what’s going to happen next.

The Simpsons come to Ireland

St. Patrick's Day So, a new Irish themed Simpsons will air tomorrow night to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and the whole world is going gaga over it.

We had lunch in Blarney today and heard from more than one person that the Simpsons will be making an appearance tomorrow at Blarney Castle! I think people are confusing reality with a cartoon storyline. Things are getting out of hand. Next thing you know, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Ducks will be spotted walking out of the Woollen Mills and drinking pints with the locals.

I have the episode set to record on Sky+ anyway. Should be a laugh.

Oh, and it’s not “Patty’s Day”. A pat is something a cow leaves behind in a field and contributes to global warming and is quite smelly. Dung beetles like it too. If you must shorten “St. Patrick’s Day”, it’s “Paddy’s Day”! Thanks Gavin for alerting me to this atrocious misspelling.

I called the litter warden

litter warden

This morning I discovered a black refuse sack of rubbish had been dumped almost in front of my house. This afternoon it’s still there but I rang the litter warden for South Cork, Jim Dooley at 021-4285417 giving my name, address and phone number. Hopefully they’ll get out here soon and find incriminating details buried in the bag but I don’t hold out much hope of that.

From a brief inspection of it, whoever dropped it doesn’t have the healthiest diet in the world. Packets of crisps, cans of Diet 7UP, plastic wrapping, and of course some of the local dogs have got their jaws into it too. Oh yeah, dogs are supposed to be under the owner’s control? ‘Course they are. The dog warden would have a field day around here too.

Anyway, I’m really pissed off at whoever dumped the rubbish. It’s disgusting, ignorant and completely irresponsible. I’ll update this post if the litter warden shows up. Seething.

2 candles and an apple pie

2 candles and an apple pie

So, I enter my 33rd year on this planet. Highlight of the day was our lunch in the Castle Hotel in Blarney where Adam was on his best behaviour and I was surprised with an apple pie and a rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung by my wife and 2 of the staff!

The burger I had for lunch was delicious too. Yum.

Italian Ice cream in Blarney

The first ice cream store in Blarney opened it’s doors for the several weeks ago with a special offer of free ice cream all day but I didn’t stop by there until today.

The store is Il Gelato and it’s around the corner from the main square in Blarney. If you’re in the area, you owe yourself the chance to try out their delicious produce. They offer a range of flavours from the usual vanilla, to chocolate, mint, strawberry and a few other unusual ones. I bought a large tub of chocolate and strawberry. Disappointingly, I thought the tub was quite small and too expensive until I tasted it. It must be the richest and creamiest ice cream I’ve ever tasted! We were after dinner in the Blarney Castle Hotel but I had room for dessert yet I could barely finish the tub!

We all enjoyed our ice cream, and even Adam got a taste of it, despite my earlier protestations that he wouldn’t taste ice cream until he was much older! I’m glad his first taste of ice cream was a good one.

A large tub is €4.80 which seems expensive, but it’s worth it. Delicious!

Perfect Parking in Blarney

I should blog this at Shite Drivers but this was too good to give up. Sorry Niall!

Perfect Parking in Blarney

What you don’t see is the old SUV (probably new when such vehicles were called 4x4s) that swerved across the road in front of me to block 3 parked cars. The elderly driver waited in the vehicle all the time I was walking about there. I parked across the road by AIB because of the stellar parking of the car above. Good thing most of the tourists are gone home now!

Edit: this is how they should have parked!

Waterloo Renewal Fundraiser

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Originally I thought we might head to Youghal tomorrow but someone called to the door a few days ago selling raffle tickets to support renewal of the local area. It’s organised by “Waterloo Renewal Group” who have great plans for the local river area and walk. There will be a BBQ at the Waterloo Inn so it looks like we won’t be going far from home on Sunday!

My home from space

If I were in the house buying market it just got a little easier to spy on the neighbours of your possible new home. My home.ie added a satellite mapping service to their site which allows one to zoom in closer than other online maps, although I don’t think you’ll be watching anyone skinny-dipping..

It’s not quite as smooth as Google or Yahoo’s offering. You have to click the direction arrows instead of dragging the map but it’s not bad for scouting around.

Finally, my map on Useamap links to a spot in Blarney a few hundred meters down the road from where I now sit. They offer driving directions and distances just by clicking on your destination on the map. It’s not perfect. It likes the main road to Cork a little too much, but I guess if you didn’t know an area it’s probably better to stay off the side roads eh?

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MyHome.ie

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Google Maps