An Irish Tragedy

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

We have a major problem here in Ireland.

While the rest of the world frets over minor trivialities such as Brexit, Mexican walls, Federal shutdowns, yellow vest protests and other such fripparies, we have a disaster in the making here.

We have pre-paid travel cards called Leap cards and apparently people are worried that their names are being misspelled on them.

In Irish, the acute accent [known as a “fada”] on a vowel comes into play, so that “a” is different to “á” and people are complaining that the accents are missing. The likes of Liam Ó Maonlaí are complaining that their name appears as Liam O Maonlai and they are distinctly unhappy about this. After all, they can see those fadas on their computer screens so why can’t they see them on their Leap cards?

This is front page news, and is likely to rival previous tragedies such as the suspending of ferry services to the Aran Islands and the lack of broadband in Ballykissmyarse.

Naturally this will become an issue of major debate and will probably see millions being spent rectifying the problem. It wouldn’t surprise me if there will be a judicial inquiry over the whole fiasco as well. We love judicial inquiries over here and have several of them running at any one time.

And the rest of you thought you had problems?

Time for a Corona

Head Rambles Posted on by 4

For years I have been having problems with pipe lighters.

I have tried quite a few and the nearest I got was the Peterson. The only problem with the Peterson was that it was a tad unreliable. I managed to get through three of them.

Thanks to my good friend Yiorgos over at jamesfox.ie I have two new ones.

The first is a bit of a conundrum. It’s official name is Passatore Leonard but searching around it is identical to a Corona one. That apart, it’s a beauty.

Click to embiggen

It’s brass and has a lovely solid feel to it. It has the feel of the kind of engineering you’d find in an old steam engine. Each piece has a solid positive motion with no wiggling or looseness. The epitome of precision engineering. The only problem I have found so far is that it gives no warning before the gas runs out. Click – normal flame. Click – nothing.

The second lighter is a Corona.

Strangely enough, I couldn’t find an image of my version on-line and I couldn’t be bothered messing with cameras. Mine is much the same as the one above apart from one small difference – there is a little slide on the side to extinguish the flame. For the absent minded, it’s an excellent way to set fire to your trouser pocket.

Is this the end of my quest for a lighter that actually works and is reliable?

Time will tell.

Incidentally, in case anyone thinks I have gone over to the dark side, this isn’t a sponsored post. Yiorgos doesn’t even know I’m writing this.

And there is no point in trying to find the lighters above on the James Fox website.

They don’t sell them

Contortions in the kitchen

Head Rambles Posted on by 10

I like to live by the old maxim – never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

It has stood me in good stead over the years as some problems manage to fix themselves and others just fall apart..

I mentioned a few weeks ago that there was a problem with my kitchen sink. Water just wasn’t flowing out as quickly as it should, and emptying the sink was taking longer and longer. Yesterday I decided to tackle the problem.

Now in the good old days it was a simple job – you just unscrewed the U-bend and cleaned it out. Nowadays however they have to complicate things and the piping under the sink is like a final test in a plumber’s apprenticeship exam. There are pipes and joints everywhere.

The first job is to clear out all the bottles and spray cans and all the other cleaning junk that I never use from the shelves under the sink. Then I have to find some kind of container to catch the inevitable flood. Finally I unscrew as many joints as I can reach. That went well and I ended up with a basin full of bits of pipe including the U-bend.

I carted all the bits into the bathroom to flush them out. I’m not going to make the old mistake of flushing them in the kitchen sink! The bits were dirty a right – all gunged up with grease and shreds of food and other yucky stuff but none were actually blocked. Fuck! That meant it was the plug-hole unit itself.

The plug of course is one of those where you twiddle a lever, instead of a good old rubber plug on a chain so it is relatively complex. I unscrewed it and sure enough it was nearly blocked with revolting stuff. I cleaned it out and that’s where my problem began.

The unit is like one of those horrible looking burgers they keep advertising on television – layers of different items all squished together. My plug unit consisted of about four pieces each with a rubber seal and all held together by one bolt. To make matters worse they all had to be held in place underneath the sink while the bolt is inserted from the top. As neither of my arms is detachable this required some fierce contortions, with my left hand trying to hold the pieces in place underneath while my right hand tried to insert the bolt from the top. As my face was half way between the two, I had to do everything by feel. It only took about twenty attempts.

It’s working now. Water drains away properly and there are no leaks. I couldn’t connect the overflow as part of my contortions so I can never overfill the sink or else I’ll flood the kitchen.

It’s nice and clean looking too as I polished everything before reassembling it.

My back is fucked though.

Beware the syndemic

Head Rambles Posted on by 13

Once again, the sky is falling on our heads.

This time we have to halve our meat and sugar consumption or else the planet will grind to a halt in 2050. Or explode. Or the oceans will inundate the landmasses and drown us all. Or we will all weigh 40 stone. Or something.

As will all Chicken Little forecasts they give us a date, some time in the future where if we don’t do X then Y will happen. Usually Y turns out to be some sort of Armageddon just to scare the pants off us.

I am somewhat bemused by the idea that if I eat two rashers instead of four, or take one spoon of sugar in my tea instead of two, then somehow I can sit back with a sigh of relief safe in the knowledge that I have not only saved the obesity “epidemic” but saved saved the planet as well.

Doubtless there have been doom merchants throughout the course of history, but in the past society had the common sense to burn them at the stake [or even burn them with the steak?]. Maybe we should have another look at that idea? I certainly remember times when we were warned that if the Earth’s population reached five billion or so, that we would all be crushed shoulder to shoulder and would all starve.

We have all become used to “epidemics” and “pandemics” but now we have a new word that will doubtless be used to beat us into submission – “syndemic”. This apparently is when two or more “epidemics” combine forces to wipe us all off the planet. So the current “syndemic” somehow combines obesity and warble gloaming into one neat package.

I am quaking in my boots.

Steak for dinner tonight, methinks?

Clusterfuck

Head Rambles Posted on by 14

I watched the shenanigans in the UK Parliament last night.

Talk about popcorn time!

I try to avoid Americanisms, but there is one that neatly encapsulates the whole affair – a clusterfuck. This is defined as “A chaotic situation where everything seems to go wrong. It is often caused by incompetence, communication failure, or a complex environment.” Indeed that is a neat description?

There is one thing that everyone seems to overlook. There is no solution to the problem. It is as simple as that.

It can be demonstrated with some simple algebra –

A = Ireland. B = Northern Ireland. C = Great Britain. D = the EU.

A = B, where A is tied to a borderless Northern Ireland under the Good Friday Agreement.

B = C, where Northern Ireland is tied to Great Britain as part of the UK.

A = D, where Ireland is tied to the EU by the Lisbon treaty.

Now solve the following equation –

A = B and B = C and A = D where C ≠ D

Can’t be done, unless A <> B [scrap the Good Friday Agreement and start a war in Northern Ireland], B<> C [make Northern Ireland part of the Republic and start another war in Northern Ireland] or A <> D [where Ireland leaves the EU].

I know which solution I would prefer.

In the meantime I shall just sit back and open another bag of popcorn.