Breadman of Xaghra…
While we were waiting at this bus stop in Xaghra…
We saw the breadman out on his daily delivery.
He drives his van around the town and beeps at every street corner .
The people come out of their houses with bags and buy fresh bread and cakes from him.
Some people didn’t come out, they had left empty bags hanging on a nail outside their front doors and the Breadman filled it up with bread for them to bring inside later.
Willie the Chocolate guy…
This guy Willie the Chocolate guy, have you ever seen him?
He is a deeply annoying human being. I hate the way they continue filming him when he has chocolate all over his face after one of his fancy chocolate tasting evenings. It just looks foul. Channel 4 obviously think his passion for chocolate surpasses any need for personal hygiene.
Despite this, I still find myself watching him when he is on TV, to be annoyed is to be entertained.
Since watching his Documentary/Series thingy on chocolate making, I have been buying good quality chocolate, sometimes with 70% cacao in it. I am turning into a bit of a chocolate snob…
Anyway, I bought this bar today…
and let me tell you, it is very very satisfying!
Go out and buy it and taste it and tell me what you think…
Horizontal Man…
I was in Central London today. I walked past this building and there was nothing remarkable about it at first glance…
but upon closer inspection, I spotted some shoes…
And attached to the shoes was a man…
He may have been asleep, he may have been dead…
I didn’t take it any further…
Bit of a wreck really…
This man is a bit of a wreck.
Saw him on Old Kent Road…
He had a dog that sat on the ground and repeatedly scratched his snout with his paw.
The man stood in front of me and was chatting on a mobile phone. I heard him tell his friend that he was “just sittin’ on a bench having a drink, just chillin… ”
His eyes told me that he had been doing that for a very long time.
He said his ‘Key Worker’ just passed by and saw him with a drink and gave him grief. He said the Key worker nagged him saying ”what are you doing with your life and you shouldn’t be drinking and blah blah blah”…
I then heard him say that he was just a bloke and that’s what blokes do…
Mean man…
This man was mean to me.
I sat in front of him on the bus this morning and he said something. I turned around and said “sorry?” (politely) and he mumbled again and I said “sorry?” again and we went round and round until he lost his patience and shouted “turn your head around, I’m talking to him” (nodding at the fella on the right of this photo, who didn’t know him from Adam as he got on at the same stop as me).
So I duly turned my head around and while I was doing that I decided to sit somewhere else altogether, somewhere well away from him. As I did so, he muttered “good choice”.
Then he said “You’re all fools”…
The Creme Egg man…
His ears were dead hairy, but not hairy enough to stop the wax from flowing out like a little waxy stream down to his hairy temples… that was like a crème egg too, the yellow bit of the crème egg. I don’ t mean to turn you off crème eggs n’ stuff…
He was focussed on one thing and one thing only and that was fag butts. He couldn’t get enough of them. His eyes combed the pavement and he bent down to pick up a flattened one that had only a centimetre in it. Even though he was a large man, he was bird like in the way he chose his fag butts. A longer fag was lying only a metre away from where he picked up the stubby one, I saw his eyes darting over to it, eyeing it up but he didn’t go for it cuz it would have been too big a risk for him. It would come with the possibility of some kind of confrontation, be it with the front of a bus, or a person shouting at him. He would then be forced out of his comfort zone and maybe he would have to run.
He decided he was better off not having any interactions.
Well I have been thinking of him since and wondering about him quite a bit…I was thinking that maybe he is from eastern europe or somewhere and he was a spy or knew some top secret information and he posed a threat to the government so they gave him a face lift and a lobotomy and shipped him over here and let him loose, dumped him on the streets like a stray dog…
…
Denis Driscoll: 1872 to….?
And this is the back…
This medal is also known as “The Mons Star” – This was the First one of three to be issued and was known as “Pip” the other two later in the war were “Squeak and Wilfred”
I kind of got distracted with my own life after that and forgot about the medal again until the other night when a man responded to my forum query and sent me a link to the National Archives website where I was overjoyed to find corresponding records.
Here is his Service Record:
I discovered his name was Denis Driscoll.
I always wondered what his name was too… I was wondering would it be Daniel, or David…
He was born in Courcey, County Cork (The Courcey Parish in West Cork is bounded by Bandon to the north, Kinsale to the East, Killbrittain to the West, and the Atlantic ocean to the south and comprises of the Villages of Ballinadee and Ballinspittle.)
He was born on 13th January 1872.
I think that ‘STO’ is most probably an abbreviation for Stoker, meaning that Denis worked in the bowels of the ship, probably loading coil for the ship’s boilers.
These are the ships he served on:
· HERMIONE Astraea Class , 2nd Class cruiser serving in the CHannel Fleet.
· WARSPITE (pictured below) Imperieuse Class , Armoured Cruiser, serving as Flagship in the Pacific.
· AMPHION Leander Class , 2nd Class Cruiser, serving on Mediterranean Station. Probably on loan as he rejoined WARSPITE again.
· PHAETON Leander Class, 2nd Class Cruiser , serving in the Pacific.
· EGERIA Sloop converted to Survey Ship, I have no details but will “best-guess” probably surveying the Pacific area.
· Return to PHAETON on Pacific Station.
· GRAFTON Edgar Class , on Pacific Station.
· Return to AMPHION in the Pacific and passage home to Devonport . Ship to Harbour Service Devonport.
· AEOLUS Apollo Class, 2nd Class Cruiser, based at Queenstown. Almost a home posting.
· DONEGAL Monmouth Class, Armoured Cruiser, Commissioned for China Station but ran aground.
· MONMOUTH as above, China Station.
· AMPHITRITE Diadem Class, 1st Class Cruiser, Ship served as a Tender to VIVID.
· WAR SERVICE
· LONDON Formidable Class Battleship. Served with the 5th Battle Squadron Channel Fleet based at Portland and Sherrness. March 1915 to the Dardanelles supporting the landings at Gaba Tepe and Anzac Cove. Transferred to Taranto to reinforce the Italian Fleet. October 1916 returned to Devonport.
- What does PIC 383709 mean? (hand written under Denis Driscoll’s name)
- What do the initials mean under rating?
- What does it mean when “Fisherman” is crossed out? Is it an admin error, do you think?
- Does anyone have any idea what “Gratuity for raising V14 Warspite” means? (This one is particularly difficult to get info on)
- Does anyone know what “RR 7475″ means? (written on bottom left)
- Can anyone decipher the handwriting beneath “Gratuity for raising V14 Warspite”?
I wondered about the background too, how would an Irishman fare on an English Ship within the Royal Navy given the tumultuous relationship between England & Ireland at that time? What would provoke an Irishman to go into Service? How would his fellow Irishmen have reacted to him?
Countless hundreds of Irish served in the British forces and usually with great distinction. For instance there was a most significant presence at Gallipoli.
He saw it as the best option to ensure the enactment of Home Rule after the war, realising that the Irish Volunteers would return as an armed army capable of confronting Ulster’s armed opposition to Home Rule.
Within a month of the start of the war this was agreed and the Irish National Volunteers were formed and encouraged to enlist.
Two Irish regiments were formed within the British Army – the 10th and 16th regiments and over 170,000 eventually joined. Also once this precedent had been established many also joined the Royal Navy.
This explains the apparent contradiction of why so many Irishmen fought on the side of the British.
Hopefully in time, I can find out more about Denis Driscoll, as more and more information is being digitalised and available online.
In the meantime, I want to put his details out there… He may be someone’s Grandfather, Great-Grandfather, Friend…
You never know who may come looking for him…
The Pakistani & The Jockey
I was weak with the hunger there the other day on my bike…
So I peddled into East Dulwich cuz I really felt like a fat juicy fish burger laced in that tangy mayonnaise and some bendy chips with tomato sauce.
I went to a classy joint called “Favorite”.
Here it is:
-for what they call the Fishwich… mmmmm! Pure Grease-Ball Material I know…
In keeping with my food, my hair was dead greasy and my clothes were mouldy.
I looked at the seating while I was at the counter and carefully planned my position of eating. I decided I was going to sit with my back to the window and eat as privately as possible cuz it’s a fish bowl of a place and I’d be scandalised if I was spotted by someone I know!
I was up at the counter anyway, ordering the grub when this whipper-snapper comes in through the door. He struck me as being a jockey in his build, a jockey of the urban kind though, the kind that has never set foot in a field.
So yer man orders grub in a cross between an Irish & an English accent.
The Pakistani behind the counter takes his twenty pound note and started to scrutinize it; holding it up to the light and squinting.
Then he produces his super magic marker and proceeds to scribble over the twenty pound note. The marker doesn’t work, maybe it’s not supposed to, I don’t know but the Pakistani isn’t satisfied with it anyway and decides to operate on the twenty pound note. He starts to rip the top bit where the foil strip is and then the bottom part where the foil strip ends. He is still not satisfied with it’s authenticity and the jockey is getting visibly agitated.
The jockey takes out an almerciful wad of £20 notes from his back pocket and tries to convince the Pakistani that all his twenties are the same. While he does so, I notice he has a rake of tattoos; a swallow and some random illegible words & letters.
The Pakistani takes another few twenties from the Jockey and between the jigs and the reels they lose track of how many £20 notes have changed hands and the Jockey thinks the Pakistani has one too many of his twenties and this is going on as I am handed my fish burger.
I sink my teeth into the soft burger bun, the top of it lovingly clinging to the roof of my mouth, as the Jockey’s blood level rises.
The Pakistani decides that he’s not going to accept the Jockey’s money and hands the original twenty back to him. It’s all ripped and dishevelled and only half of it’s former self.
At this point, the Jockey flips his ABSOLUTE LID!!!
He rises up on his tippy toes & does all these high follutin’ jerky movements & points his finger while shouting all sorts of profanities. He threatens to climb over the counter and give him a few slaps. He tells the Pakistani to remember his face because the next time he sees it he will be chopping him up into tiny pieces. The Pakistani is giving him lip back – Barking away… I’m caught in the crossfire chewing the cud.
The Jockey asked the Pakistani what time he was due to finish. The Pakistani tells him and they agree Shakespearian style to meet and take this issue out into the night.
The Jockey tells him to make the most of his last few hours of life because he won’t see tomorrow.
I finish up my chips and head off home; hoping that I won’t be on Crime Watch the next night with my greasy hair and my terrible eating habits.
The Moving Statue of Ballinspittle
So I am brushing up on my Irish at the Irish Centre at Hammersmith. I always like going to the Irish Centre, they have great goings ons there. I went to see Finbarr Furey there last year; I sat up in the front row in what reminded me of the parish community halls you’d find in rural Ireland.
Anyway, I was waiting in the foyer of the Irish Centre, waiting for my class and having a suppa soup when I looked up on the wall and I saw a painting of what had to be the statue of Holy Mary in Ballinspittle. The reason I say it had to be of Ballinspittle, was because there was an almerciful crowd gathered round her, arms folded all staring up at her expectedly. Among the crown of people was a “Mr Soft Whip” Ice cream van…
When I saw the painting, I said to myself “jeez thas funny now” and I only thinking of the moving statue’s the other day.
What in the name of God came over Ireland in the early eighties that led everyone in the country to believe that the Holy Statues were coming to life? What kind of mental state were we in at all? Ballinspittle didn’t know what hit it, normally a sleepy ol’ village; all of a sudden there were people coming in bus loads, travelling for hundreds of miles to the grotto, they had to pour concrete over the adjacent field to make a car park, the roads were widened to accommodate the traffic, two new jaxes were built, a couple of telephone boxes were put up…
It was mass hallucination at the grotto, everyone standing around, the rosary blasted out of the loud speakers and the crowds joined in, in prayer.
In its peak, prayers burst into hymns, it was like a big concert.
The prayers were interrupted now and then by murmurs such as “She nodded” or “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, there’s a tear rolling down her cheek, la”
People were claiming to have been cured and everything. Some deaf one said that she came home with her hearing intact, I don’t know…
I think it all came to abrupt end anyway, when a few fiends felt it was getting out of control and took the matter into their own hands. In full view of everyone, they climbed up to the statue wielding an axe and hammer, they took a few chunks out of the face of the statue, everyone sort of slowly emerged from the trance after that. The statue was replaced but the people stopped coming.
It’s the kind of thing you think back of and say to yourself: “did that really happen?…”
For proof that it all happened, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZjM83wZmWw
I’d love to buy a statue… Can some one buy me one – I want a life size one…
Gimme the God Damn Peppercorns wilya!
I went up to the Turkish shop up the road there the other day. It’s like a proper mini-supermarket for those of you who don’t know it. Look, here is a photo of it for ya altogether:..
Anyway, I went in and scanned the aisles for some peppercorns.
I gave up in the search and decided to ask the fella with the white coat. It’s unlike me to ask, I usually circle round and round til I find what I need and it’s only when I have thoroughly exhausted this search do I approach the men in white coats. Anyway, on this occasion I musta waltzed around the aisles enough to make me dizzy. So I say to yer man “excuse me, do ye have any peppercorns?”
Yer man opens his mouth and goes “ah!” as he strides longleggedly round the corner, I follow him and he leads me to the popcorn.
“Eh, that’s popcorn, I asked for peppercorns?”
“Aaaaaah” he says with more passion this time and strides off out the front door of the shop…
“Where are you taking me now?” I asked him. “I don’t think ye’d be keeping the peppercorns outside”
He leads me to the row of fresh peppers and looks at me as if he has given birth to them or something…
“Eh YEAH… they are peppers… I asked you for peppercorns…”
Now he slows down and kinda gives me a puzzling look.
I soften and explain that I am looking for the other half of the salt&pepper pair, but in it’s whole form, before you do the grindy grindy thing”
“You want salt?”
“No, I want it’s long lost brother – Pepper”
“Oh Ok, yes, we don’t have/that will be delivered on Friday”
“I don’t think it’ll be delivered on Friday, I think you don’t understand me and you’re brushing me under the It-will-be-delivered-on-Friday rug” I said to a misunderstanding face.
So I leave him to his confusion and approach another white coat.
“Excuse me, do you speak English?”
“Yes, yes!” he says in broken English, but I make a mental note to give him a chance before I bollick him.
Do you have any peppercorns?…
