Leprechaun Falls

Now into the 2nd week of August, weather still warm but now cooler. Since writing last we have been away to Ireland for a week's holiday. Good old Oirish land o'blarney! Overall I guess for me and Tamdin the whole thing can be classified as being a bit of an adventure. We took the car over on the ferry from Fishguard in west Wales to Rosslare in south east Ireland. Stayed a night in a hotel in Rosslare and then drove across Ireland the following day to our cottage which was on the west coast in County Kerry. Weather was a welcome change to what has been a long hot dry summer in London. Over there it was wetter and fresher but we still had a bit of sun. I guess we did not do anything tremendously exciting; walked most days, went out in the car and had a Guiness or two in the evenings. Guinn Guinny gone goo. Definitely tastes better when you have it in it's homeland there aint no doubt about that. We cooked our own meals most evenings as there was a good kitchen and we prefer our own food. Went out once on Tamdin's birthday but it was a bit of a disaster, she had an Irish stew which looked like the leftovers of everything else thrown into a pot of hot water and slopped up for the paying punter. I did a bit better by chossing the evening special which was roast pork and it was cooked fresh. In the end I guess I can conclude by saying that I was glad to go there but also glad to get back despite the fact that when we returned to the Smoke the weather was hot and stuffy and robbed us of all our energy for at least a day.

Been a few days now since I wrote the above. The main thing that has happened since then is that the UK police etc have captured and arrested a bunch of Muslim lads who were allegedly plotting to blow up about 9 nine planes en route from the UK to the US. They were apparently going to do this means of liquid exploisves smuggled onto planes in fizzy drinks bottles. Who knows if any of this is true or not? The one thing that it has done of course is deepen suspicion of the large and ever growing UK Muslim community whilst deepening their own sense of persecution. It is a bit scary to think where all this might be heading but whatever the scenario it does not look that good at the moment. There is big inconvenience to air travellers at present because of all this heightened security but that is no bad thing as there are far too many planes in the sky anyway. It all just reinforces to me just how difficult it is to avoid these things when living in London where you get it shoved down your neck 24 hrs a day, or so it seems.

London has a wired pulse about it which means that it is hard to avoid all these events and their possible future implications; there is always a slight touch of the apocalypse to things when I'm in the Smoke, whether it be a simple personal apocalypse in the form of mugging or attack or a more general one in the form a bigger outrage against many. It is something that one just has to live with but that should not excuse or under-exaggerate it in any way. Lying in bed at night and hearing the sirens blazing is something that I am used to. In fact when the sirens were blazing the other night it turned out that most of them were off a few miles down the road to Walthamstow to raid the terrace houses in which these Muslim boys lived and cart them off to the Nick. Taped off streets as a consequence. Do the security services feel sure they have got it right? If yes then it is chilling but then again to be honest everyone with any sense should still be chilled in the sense of wary not cool from the effect of 9/11 barely 5 years ago.

If they are right it means that there are many, many people even in this country who will do anything they can to kill as many people as possible in the name of their religion which of course is Islam. If the security guys have made another booby like they did a month or two ago in East London's Forest Gate when they shot a lad after a dawn raid on his home then the communities they pile into in such numbers and with such state of the art anti-terror kit are just not going to believe a word the auhorities say when similar events happen like this in the future, and happen they will. In fact it is fair to say that a fair number of Muslims in the UK are not interested in believing anything they say already, in fact they never have. Even to the extent of seeing something like 9/11 as little more than a Zionist conspiracy. So that is the sitaution, and we will just have to see how this latest episode pans out. Real or not? Who knows?

As a final note however it is worth mentioning that it is hardly helping when the UK allows itself to be used as a refuelling stop for US planes carrying bombs to Israel so that they can then go and drop them on Lebanese cities. No sir, that is not a good thing to allow to happen because Israel will push as far as it can with actions that are in anyone's book outrageous and will only stop when they are well and truly forced to bu others which usually means the good ole' Yankee Doodles. Fine, Hezbollah the radical group in Lebanon whom they are trying to eradicate are a dangerous outfit who are spoiling for a fight, but that cannot justify the scenes we have seen on our TV screens over the last few weeks. Muslims getting killed and their houses being blown to peices are only adding fuel to the fire and if we are helping to keep the fires burning then we cannot be too surpised when others want to take a good bite out of us, irrespective of where they come from.

Weather is cooler now. Sleep is so so. You know it is so difficult these days to lie down on my bed and fall into a deep sleep from which I wake up feeling totally refreshed. But in the midst of all that might be happening to me that could be so much worse it really is a minor inconvenience isn't it?

This draft is taking a fuck of a long time to get on the blog. Don't know why, guess I read some of what I wrote the other day and thought it was a pile of shit. Just haven't had the energy or the inclination to go back to it. But I won't delete it. This is going to be a serious attempt to finish the bastard off. We'll see how it goes.

Went down to Wales last week but it was not a brilliant success and instead of coming back on the Sunday we returned on the Friday night. Mainly due to a combination of wet weather and committments back in the Smoke. The good time in Taffyland just didn't happen.

Now I'm turning my thoughts dowards the release of Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times on Monday. Some advance reviews are beginning to come through on Expecting Rain and the signs are looking good.

I'm looking at the sky
Studying the signs
Hangman's crossroads
Way on down the line,
They say there ain't faith no more
Maybe there never was
And now the fires are burnin'
In the land of because

There ain't much doubt that I'll go out and buy it pretty much as soon as I can which according to my calendar will be on Monday next week. In between here and there is the Tibetan picnic down in Sussex at the w/end and on the Saturday night I'll be in Battle seeing Van Morrison. Looking forward to that I have to say. Seen him a couple of times before but pretty much way back in the distant past. We're taking the tent down to the picnic and I guess I better make sure I stash away a bottle of booze as well. That's about it, let's rock!