I am writing this back in Ireland while we are on our easter holidays, and the weather here is absoluley fantastic. The sun always follows the righteous, I suppose!!
We have just had two weeks off before the mad season, and Charlie´s Bar re-opens tonight (Monday the 12th). I am flying back myself on Tuesday because I have a day´s work to do here today.
It’s so funny, but the first thing that came up on my screen when I turned on my computer was some ad saying “PROTECT YOURSELF AGAINST ID FRAUD”. I was just thinking, if you said that to someone 20 years ago, they would have you commited. Can you imagine walking through Skibereen 20 years ago, meeting a friend along the road and asking him “are you protected against id fraud?”
I read an article in a paper yesterday which said that the website Bebo.com was started in 2005, sold for, I can’t remember how, many billions around 2008, and now it’s falling away to Facebook etc., and is fast in decline. This world has been moving at a dizzy speed for the last 20 years, or if you look at the progress, if you can call it that, which I personally don’t. The world remained more or less the same for millions of years and in the last 100 or so we have had cars, planes etc., which is *some* transfrormation in 100 years – but when you look at what has happened in the last 20 years only, and even more so in the last 10, you just feel like lying down on the grass and holding onto the world before someone sends us off to space to try to grow spuds, and either educate or be educated by the little green men, or are they green and are they little?! If they are little,will we be racist towards them, and if they are large, will we call them sir and hope that they are not racist against blacks and whites??!!
If you lived for a thousand years and never slept, you still would probably only see maybe 1% of what’s on the internet and the more you realise you don’t know as you surf the web, the thicker you feel and the more frustrated you get, the less you mix with your fellow human beings, and the more time you spend on your own. I was never much one for television because I saw it as a barrier to conversation with our fellow human beings, and I’m starting to think now after a few years that maybe the computer will have to vacate the home as well. Maybe I will have a farewell party for my computer and buy a statue of Obama and put it in the computer´s place.
Why Obama? You could ask, and justifiably so… but when the yanks voted recently to give health cover to 30 Million, which is 10% of their poulation, I couldn’t believe how close the vote was. I spent a lot of time in communist countries, and I know the faults with that system, then you have extrene capitalism in the States, where up to now 30 Million people had no access whatsoever to any medical requirements. It makes you think, even in these sh*t times, that we are lucky to be from Europe where at least the very basics of nearly all humans are looked after, and I know *badly* in a lot of cases, with people on trolleys in hospitals etc., but not all Europe is like that.
Having visited a Russian hospital 20 years ago, I turned to the person I was with and told them if I got sick there, do whatever you have to do, and charter a plane and get me back to Ireland. Now I think to myself in Ireland, if anything happens to me while I’m here, charter a plane and get me back to Lanzarote, where the local hospital is fantastic. Hopefully I won’t need one anywhere, which brings me to another point – for those of you who know the predicament our good friend Sergi found himself in a couple of months ago, I’m delighted to tell you that after 3 operations over the last few months he has got the all clear, and should hopefully be back playing in Charlies again in September, and again to thank Pedro for filling in for him in style…
Hey, I had a dream the other night after a few pints of Guinness, and the dream went something like this: the credit crunch and NAMA were the best thing that ever happened in Ireland since we got our independence, or most of it! You see I dreamt that in a few years´ time there will be no taxes in Ireland for a period of approx. 10 years because our government bought all the banks´ assets for 50% of their 2007 value, and ended up with the majority shares in all the banks, and even owning some of them completely, which they also got for a complete song in bad times. Then, when the world economy bounces back, they will make a ferocious, incredible, ludicrious amount of money on both the banks and their assets, and they will have so much money they won’t have to collect taxes for a decade, at which point I heard a noise downstairs, woke up, realised it was the postman, opened the post to find out that my mortgage has gone up 5%! Jasus, that Guinness is great stuff for the head, and you don’t even have to leave the parish to get it (yet)!
I had the honour and the privilige of being at Rory’s and Cara’s wedding in Edinburgh on Saturday, and what a fantastic day it was! The sun was shining, not a cloud to be seen and about 20C degrees. Everyone was in great spirits and the day and evening went like a dream. Fair play to them both, they really made a huge effort with every detail, and hard work in the months leading up to it, and it well paid off. They looked completely at ease and so happy and all because of their planning and effort. I wish them all the best for the rest of their lives together, and I know they will have a great honeymoon for the next few weeks, and look forward to welcoming them back to that silly ould rock we all live on in the Atlantic Ocean.
Must go out now and get a tan before I go back to Lanza on Tuesday!!
Adios!
Barry Murphy
