I was sitting out in the sun this afternoon, just thinking to meself “how did I end up here?”.

The truth is that I love music,and always wanted to put a good live music bar together, but the plan was to do it in Ireland. It’s funny, because for 20 years I used to get up at 5am to go to work, and now I am going to bed every morning at the same time I used to get up! The memory of getting up at 5am on dark wet winter ornings and starting the artic that I used to drive before having breakfast, so that it would be warm when I got into it… Having said that, it was lovely in the summer mornings to be up and about. With no airconditioning in the trucks, we often stopped along the road during the day next to lakes or rivers and have a swim for ourselves. We used to make the most of life and always tried to have a bit of fun where the opportunity presented itself.

Here is one short story of the type of craic we used to have. At certain times of the year we would get phone calls in the middle of the night and we would have to head to Connemara with salt for trawlers landing with fish. A friend of mine (Pat the Bull) and myself got the call one night at about 12 o´clock. He loaded the salt before me, and was gone up the road ahead of me. It was a dead clear night with a full moon and somewhere up around Oranmore, I saw him miles ahead of me on a long straight stretch of road. We all had different designs of lights on the trucks and it was easy to tell who was who. It was about 3 am and I switched off all my lights, which I was able to do because the night was so bright. After about 20 minutes or so more driving, I caught up with him with no lights on all the time and drove inside the yellow line. As I was nearly neck and neck with him, I turned on all the headlights together and let the horn rip!!! Just checking his heart!!! Thankfully he survived and I survived the f*cking he gave me!! The money was bad, the hours were long, but the craic was 90…

My weekends consisted of Sundays off, which I spent most of the day falling in and out of sleep on the couch and trying to find energy to play with the kids, and then I would go to this pub with the artic at abo10 o´clock and play the bodhran in a session, which I loved doing. When the session was over and all the lads were heading home, I would jump into the truck and head for Galway. That was the way then, with 3 kids, a wife and a mortgage at 23 years of age.

I don’t regret one bit of it and, as I said, we made fun anywhere we could. The cops used to be after us all the time for bald tyres, no tax, overweight etc etc. We had no money for such luxuries. I remember I taxed a truck for 3 months one time and one of the lads said it was a vulgar display of wealth and a shocking waste of good money. I’m thinking he was right – it must have been a rush of blood to the head – or maybe I felt cocky because I was after getting to within 3 months of my arrears on the mortgage and the judge was proud of me!!

I came up with this great idea then that instead of rolling ten cigarettes before heading on a 3 hour journey, I would only roll two and promised myself I wouldn’t stop until I arrived at the other end. I stood to my promise, but I was rolling cigarettes with one hand before I got to Mallow, laughing and congratulating myself on how clever I was. F*cking ejet.

There was a long chapter and a long road between them times and sitting here in the sun today thinking about them. I had a list of things that I wanted to do with my life from when I was 20 years old and was very careful to do them in an order that worked well with age. No point in going skiing or racing when you are 70. So far my plans have gone well, even though the road got bumpy from time to time and different courses had to be taken, temporarily, to avoid potholes.

I have four plans left in me, if I last long enough:

1. I have designed a small spa hotel that I want to build whenever the opportunity and location arise.
2. If possible, I want to get my hands on a very badly run-down farm and put it back on the map again in my 50s.
3. I want to do two more seasons of rally driving.
4. I want to end me days doing charity work, drinking dirty pints of Guinness, talking shit with the friends (in a pub called “Charlies Beag) I made along the road, singing the odd song, and have nothing to me name on my last day, just as I came into the world.

Let’s see how it pans out.

For the next 8 years or so, I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing because of the great people that I´m working with, and Anna (my partner) loves it here in Lanzarote as well. Then we will be calling into Charlie´s, telling the young fellows where they are going wrong. We might just get this hotel built in that time, with a little luck, and two seasons rallying might just fit in as well, if the whores would give me the odd weekend off!

Just to let you know how f*cked up my head is – I was thinking of building a dairy farm here on Lanzarote! One of the things I miss about home is proper milk. Why couldn’t you import the cows from Ireland (4 legged ones), import the feed, silage etc. and build slatted sheds to house them? Then we would have Irish beef/Irish milk fresh from cows that were eating Irish grass. Don’t laugh – it’s not so long ago since some clown went on the late late to say he was going to bottle water and sell it.

Have a nice day. I’m going for a swim.

At the tender age of 43, this is my second time living through a recession, and recessions by and large are not a bad thing if you are ready for them. For most of you this is going to be a long-winded post that you may have no interest in, and I will just give my opinion on this recession that we are facing. If you’re not into this kind of thing, stop reading now, find yourself a partner of which ever sex you are into and go and do what you have to do – or just stroll down to Charlies for a pint.

Funnily enough, recessions boost the bar trade in general, and the holiday trade. The reason for this is simple and well documented – when we are going through periods like the Celtic Tiger, people feel the need to move fast with the economy and they can see others buying property and making money, and any fool could make money in those times, but not every fool could hold on to it. The stupid banks fuel the problem giving out mortgages left right and centre, and nobody can relax and enjoy life because of greed. Then you get a down turn in property and the economy and it’s cool to do nothing. People start to relax and spend their time drinking a few pints and enjoying themselves again because they don’t feel that they will miss something, and they don’t worry that others around them will move on faster than themselves.

There are those who unfortunately are under pressure to pay banks for their first home because, again, the bastards lend too much money fighting for a share of the market. It’s my opinion that those who are in that position should realise that this is much more the banks´ problem than yours. People who are struggling should get together and collectively tell the banks to go and f*ck themselves. They should pay what they can comfortably afford, and the banks can wait for the rest. If everyone did that, who are the banks going to sell the houses too? It’s time for the people to control the banks and not the other way around.

Over the last three years or so my own lads in their early 20s have been saying to me “why did you stop building houses, apartments and warehouses?” etc. I told them that everything was too expensive. Just by looking at average salaries against average house prices, and even working couples can’t afford to live at this rate. They said to me that everyone was still building and there would never be a recession again…. Mmmmmm!!!!

Unfortunately I was right and they were wrong. At that age they have only seen everything going up, people buying, buying, and no stop in sight. I am happy that they now see what can happen at an early age, just like I did in the late eighties, so that they won’t forget it for the rest of their lives. They obviously don’t remember when they were two years old and I was in and out of court with the banks trying to hold on to our house, which thankfully I did, by the skin of my teeth. But I wasn’t too worried about it, living in Ireland, the government would give you a corporation house anyway, and I knew if that’s the worst that can happen, things ain’t bad at all. This was a much bigger problem for the bank than it was for me. I would get going again and buy another house. What I do remember about those times was that there were a lot of people under serious pressure and life was grey to dark – or moral was I suppose.

Take a couple with 52,000 Euros per year net income. This is the way they will work out their finances, in this order, weekly:

mortgage 600
shopping 150
insurance 20
etc. etc.

The way it should be worked out I believe is the following way:

spending money 300
shopping 150
insurance etc. etc.

And whatever is left is what they can pay for a mortgage which would reduce the price of property and give people a quality of life.

How long will this reccesion last? I think things will go down about another 20% in the next two years and will steady, and slowly, start picking up. For sure, it will start to get a little better a year after that a/h Bush is gone.

The bottom line is that banks are greedy institutions that are only answerable to shareholders to make as much profit as possible at anyone´s expense, regardless of the consequences. Their greed blinds them from making long term steady decisions for the benefit of all including themselves. Now, because of their lack of vision and greed, they have thrown money at anyone that will take it, driving up the price of everything to a false level, which is now correcting itself (otherwise known as a “reccession”), and they are unable to keep life in balance for the public, or for themselves. As I have said before, if they lend more than a certain proven income to a couple or individual, they should be left swing and have no opportunity by law to get the money back.

If our governments can’t control them, or won’t, then we (the public) should. If everyone stopped paying their mortgage or any loan for one month, then you would see very quickly what would happen. The banks would be very accomodating very fast, and they would be begging the public instead of the public begging them, and even more of the public would be at Charlie´s having a few pints and a laugh singing along with Skin & Hide,while the greedy would be in their suits 24 hours a day, scratching their heads in offices, worried and thinking “what will we do now?” Then, after a while, the public would feel sorry for these poor assholes and agree to give them X amount per month, and we would never have a recession again as long as we don’t have another Bush, spending billions killing people.

That brings me to think again about people power. The American and English soldiers should not be waiting for Bush to withdraw them out of Iraq. They should simply say “Adios” and walk off to the airport and join the rest of us at Charlie´s for a few pints and refuse to put themselves in the way of fire, or to be firing at others.

Power and greed has the likes of Bush and the banks fcked up,which in turn has the world f*cked up. It’s a disease they have, just like cancer, and they need our help to cure these diseases. I hope none of us would walk away from someone lying on the street sick, so let’s not walk away from the opportunity to help the likes of Bush and the big w*nkers (sorry, bankers) of the world. It’s our opportunity to relieve them of their pain.

That’s enough shit for one day. Or is it shit?

Murphy

Hi folks/scumbags/leprechauns/nymphomaniacs – and Charlie´s customers.

Just to let ye all know that “Skin & Hide” will be playing at Charlie´s 7 nights a week for the summer months. We tried to take saturday nights off, but it didn’t work. That’s because Mick and James, who were filling in are crap!!!!

Only joking.

They are a very hard working talented two-piece with a fantastic reputation, but the truth is that no two-piece could replace our own fantastic 5-piece band. That´s why we have agreed with Mick and James to do the early slot on saturday nights and Skin & Hide will be on at 11.30. So the line up for the summer is that Gally (who will be back this week) will play from 9.30 to 11.30 every night for July and August except Saturday nights (which will be Mick and James) and Skin & Hide will follow on every night. Colin Monday will do the “early” for the first week in September, and Graham Mills will be back doing the early set for the remainder of September and all of October.

I would just like to thank Gally, Graham and Colin who are coming and going off the island and filling in the “earlies” for us. As any of you who have seen them play will know, they are all very talented musicians with years of experience.

As for Skin & Hide, we had to make the decision to play 7 nights as there was no alternative. We are lucky with the way Skin & Hide work for two reasons: the first, and most important, is that we all get on really well and enjoy what we are doing – which makes life very easy – or much easier for us, and second, there are three lead vocalists in the band, which means nobody´s voice gets wrecked. Physically it can get tough for a drummer to play 7 nights a week, especially at the pace we play, so we may need to get a substitute drummer in the odd night over the summer to give Shaky a break now and then. This isn’t a big problem because it’s “only” the drummer and not a musician, and you can find drummers under every cactus plant on the island!!!!

I’m going to work tonight with two bodyguards!!

Adios

Murphy