Motorcycle Forum / Country Specific / UK Group / November 2008

Off day!

My first trip to Ireland was peppered with events like that ... I can
well understand how people go there and never return; we had been there
10 days or so, and had got to know the regulars in one pub quite well,
so tended to sit with them and chat as they were such friendly people.

I lamented the fact I had to go back to work to one chap, and he (having
ascertained that I knew about making cattle fencing from my time on my
dad's farm) offered me a job there and then - a spare room at his place
he and his wife didn't use anymore, and solid work at however much it
was per week, and the money wasn't bad - I can drive tractors & combine
harvesters, as well as being able to work with cattle, do odd
agricultural jobs like cattle fencing and suchlike, so I guess I'd have
been pretty useful to him as he was getting on a bit and didn't want to
do so much himself anymore.

I came this >< close to taking him up on his offer, as I was 20 or so at
time and *hated* my IT job then ... I sometimes wonder how my life would
have turned out had I accepted.  When I got back to work and told an
Irish colleague, she said the small towns of Ireland often have the odd
Brit, Aussie, Kiwi, etc who visited once and never went home, "and none
of them have any liver left".  I believed her :)

The other "odd drinking hours" one I remember from then was a place
further west in another little town, where we were engaged in a Friday
all-nighter, through til dawn.  At the time the closing time in the UK
was something like 10:30 or 11, but in this *tiny* village there were
something like a dozen pubs, which made you think that there was no way
they could stay in business (as they weren't expensive places to drink
in) ... until you saw how seriously many of the locals drank ... a group
of me, my mate, and maybe 8 or 10 locals had a great time drinking and
then, as one pub closed, moving to the next ... eventually we all
emerged from one place into daylight, blinking like a load of moles too
long underground, and I thought "f.cking hellbeans it's 7am!  Still,
they'll stop now" ...

... but no, we tottered up the road (carrying a couple of our number, my
mate being one of them) to a normal looking house, where a chap knocked
at the door, and a charming old lady answered and invited us into her
front room, where she took our orders for drinks, then came back with
bottles of beer & stout and glasses of whiskey :)  

*Then*, having made sure we were in no danger of running out of booze,
and having collected the very reasonable small sums of money she
charged, she said "now then, are any of you lads hungry?  All that
drinking takes it out of you" and, receiving a chorus of "yes please!"
from several of us, set to and made us all a slap-up cooked brekkie.  I
remember to this day she only charged a quid for a massive plate of just
about everything, which was a stonking deal even then.

If there's a heaven for me then I want something like that in it :)

Flap Shots ?

No the injection of cash was supposed to have taken place some 15 years
ago, so I doubt it.

<Wind Up darsy Mode>

For the craic, like?

</WUdM>

In communiqué <cdfai4plkrqe4ah44ld3mmeikhh1fjei74@4ax.com>, Colin Irvine
<look@bottom.of.home.page> cast forth these pearls of wisdom

Indeed. SWMBO still relates tales of her trip to Dingle with her usual
suspects. Choosing a cottage to rent that meant negotiating Connor's
Pass every night certainly made it memorable.

+----------------------------------------------------------------+

Yep - or even, and more often than not, right into lane 0. Which is
nice of them.

Agreed, but then so many port towns are like that.

Think of Dover.  Or Calais.  Or Hastings [1]

Le Havre is weird, but in a different way.  It's got some really odd
architecture, if you're into concrete (in a non-literal sense).

[1] ok so it's not a "proper" port anymore, but YKWIM - it's still a
f.cking toilet of a seaside town

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Jim <arrrrr@0.0.0.0> saying
something like:

It's a kind of halfway solution to having bigger roads without much
extra cost. When the idea was originated it made a good deal of sense
considering the traffic volumes at the time and it still works well
enough up to moderate volumes of traffic.

It all goes to shite when some c.nt just won't pull over, and that
happens from time to time, especially when the driver in front just
feels dopey, bloody-minded or simply uncertain.

Officially, the yellow lanes are for cyclists and walkers and drivers
may pull in to allow overtaking. The problem is, if you spend any time
here you'll notice, the yellow lanes are liable to end suddenly and can
leave overtaken drivers facing a dead end.

Of course, most new roads are of DC standard where necessary.

heh.  It didn't bother me, firstly because I didn't do much of the
driving and secondly because, after the first couple of nights and some
terrifying driving antics from the locals I determined that staying
pissed and relaxed was the way forward.  So I did.

We did have someone do *the* most bizarre overtake though, which I've
just remembered ... we were somewhere between Cork and Kerry, going down
a fairly straight bit of 2-lane blacktop, and the chap coming up behind
us clearly thought he was (or may indeed have been) an Irish rally
driving champion - you could see him going for overtakes on the traffic
in the line behind us, and he was clearly perfectly comfortable with
overtaking into people's faces (it was the flashing of oncoming traffic
that alerted us, this being during the day).

When he finally got to us my mate (not the most confident or brave of
drivers at the best of times) tried manfully to squeeze over a bit, to
give Capt Keen(e) some room, but the guy did the most surreal thing - he
pulled out to overtake (and this time without oncoming traffic, so a
perfectly safe overtake) ... and drove purposefully and manfully
*straight* into the shallow, wide ditch to the *right* of the road.  
Absolutely amazing - never seen anything like it before or since.  He
just pulled out, got alongside, and then was gone, with a CRUNCH noise
and a flurry of grass and mud.

It scared the crap out of my mate, but I insisted we went back to see if
the guy was ok.  We went a couple of miles up the road, found a
crossroads, turned around, and drove slowly back - maybe 5 mins or so?

We knew it was the right place, coz there was mud *everywhere*, but the
guy must have found a way out, coz there was just a set of very muddy
tyre-tracks, which did a U-turn and went back the way he came, rather
than continuing on.  I suspect he went home to change his underwear :)

I'm desperately trying to recall what car it was ... I have it in mind
it was something like either a Chevette HSR or one of those other fast
Vauxhalls - maybe a Magnum?  Anyway, we turned around and continued on
our merry way.

Surreal country.

Aaah, so that's why they're always getting it wrong.  

And English spelling isn't?

In the referenced article, darsy <darsy@sticky.co.uk> writes:

Gaelic?

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember darsy <darsy@sticky.co.uk> saying
something like:

Something I've always thought. Made up deliberately f.cking awkward as
an exclusion process.

I understand your reference, but don't get why you've made it.

--
d.

In the referenced article, "Cane" <caneUKRM@gmail.com> writes:

Dunleary.