Severe Jam Damage

They scrobbled me in the park the bastards - and then tried to kill me in the mountains.

We went for a walk on Saturday after a night on the beer (or in my case rum, whisk(e)y and champagne.)

On the map above you can see where the planned route runs - basically around the top of the mountain to the JB Malone memorial, a peek down at Lough Tay and then close the loop back to the car park.

EXCEPT that somewhere along the way a detour was taken, and then another detour - and our ‘gentle 2 hour stroll’ turned into a tromp all over Ballinasloe.

I still think it was a trap and if we’d followed the Coillte detour right to the end we’d have ended up in some hillman’s cooking pot.

Map Legend:
Black path - correct path we should have taken
Red path - our detour(s) and backtracking
Blue path - briefly lost the Gurrier when he legged it into the woods
Lego Cop and mini - the slowest cop chase ever witnessed, even slower than OJ.
Skull and Bones - destroyed forest land aka ‘Coillte was here, ok?’ aka ‘Mordor’

I’ve been scanning old family photos for the last while, which is another reason that things have been rather quiet in this neck of the woods. (I’ll go into that in more details later.) My aunt gave me a bag of photos and letters that were from my maternal grandmothers things and because I (unthinkingly) offered I have now become the unofficial family archivist. I’ve gotten about halfway through the pics on my mothers side of the family - at least the ones I know about, I think another uncle has another heapum of photos somewhere in his attic as well.
The pic here is of ‘Gillie and Gang’ - my grandfather John Joseph (also known as Sean) is in the back row, 5th from left. I’ve not been able to find out anything about this bunch of reprobates, other than that my grandfather and two of my great uncles travelled around Ireland with this band in the 1920s. I’m also assuming that ‘Gillie’ is the slightly rotund jolly looking fellow on the far right.
Who knows what else I will find as I continue through the ‘Box of Mysterious and Slightly Dusty Smelling Delights.’
Click for more on flickr.

Yup, its been quiet around here, I know. Work is keeping me extra busy and I just haven’t had the energy to write anything of interest for SJD. By the time I get home in the evening all I’m good for is crashing out on the sofa. Twitter isn’t helping either - being able to ‘micro-blog’ means that all of my thoughts get reduced to 140 characters.

I’m finding it hard to write in complete sentences again, bear with me.

1809 - Edward Jordan hanged for piracy in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His body was tarred and hung from a gibbet as a warning to others.
1887 - Boris Karloff was born.
1889 - the jukebox made its debut in the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.
1936 - first edition of LIFE magazine is published.
1963 - first broadcast of Dr. Who.
1963 - Linden Johnson takes over position of US President.
1985 - EgyptAir Flight 648 is hijacked by the Abu Nidal Organization resulting in the deaths of 60 people.
1990 - Roald Dahl dies.
1996 - Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 crashes into the sea after being hijacked and running out of fuel. Over 100 people die.
2003 - Shevardnadze resigns as president of Georgia.
2006 - Alexander Litvinenko dies of radiation poisoning.

Olympia Theatre
Written and Performed by Aidan Dooley

It’s been a while since I was at the theatre for anything, and going to a one man show I was a bit apprehensive. How in the hell was one bloke going to keep a sold out theatre interested for 2 hours? Turns out, very easily. Aidan Dooley is a natural storyteller and after a brief explanation of where and what the Antarctic is (at the bottom, a large land mass, no-one lives there - Jade Goody take note) we got into the meat and bones of it. Tom Crean’s life from when he joined the British Navy, his expeditions on the Discovery, the Terra Nova and the Endurance and finally his pub in Annascaul.
More of a history lesson than a play, but interesting nonethless. Dooley engaged the audience - adults and children alike - in one sweet scene he explained the danger of deep crevices by leaning over the edge of the stage and shouting ‘helllooooo’ into the ground. Somewhere in the upper circle a small child shouted ‘hellllooooo!’ back at him which prompted the off-the-cuff ‘There’s my echo’.
Dooley is not a classic actor but he is a fantastic storyteller, bringing Crean back to life, sharing with us the disappointment at not being chosen for the final trek to the pole, the joy of hearing the breakfast bells ring in South Georgia, and the grief at finding Scott and three of the final party frozen in a tent a mere 11 miles from help.
If the show comes anywhere near you I would recommend it, as would the sold out audience last Saturday who gave the show a rousing standing ovation.