Tales Of The Gurrier

Wandering in the city today, tasting the air. Down Henry Street you can feel this thing gnawing down on the citizens. Grinding down the haircuts, shortening skirts, exposing skin and prejudices. Watching the drunks, the junkies, the pickpockets. The Henry Street hawkers and walkers.

This street vibrates at a crossroads. A heat exchanger for the city. Social groups pass over and through one another. Strange alchemical reactions occur here. Odd growths and mutant strains of Dublin flourish and cross pollinate.

A startlingly camp young man served me in a shop. He looked about fourteen, I guess he must have been older. He actually shrieked with joy at my choice of hair goop. How refreshing change can be sometimes.

Two young gurriers stand in the street, being studiously ignored,  as they scream at long haired, middle class teenagers. ‘Heeyar! Heeyar hippy! HIPPY!’ ‘Heeyar ye fuckin’ ginger fuck! I’ll fuckin’ batter yeh!’ I give them the Face Ov Doom. Some things never change.

At Jervis street I pass a man I may have worked with once, but he does not notice me and I walk on.

Mary Street is transformed now, akin to a London backstreet. All life is here. A Polish shop offers ‘30% off Jars’, electronic phone repair shops with menus entirely in foreign tongues, Cyrillic alphabets and Chinese logograms. An asian family emerge from ‘Asian Market’ passing four immaculately dressed African men heading on into town.

One of the asian girls laughs in reply to a sibling, ‘Janey mack, you should have seen the state of him!’  The Dublin accent rolling off her tongue is pure inner city, shaded by the East. The idiom is Dublin to the bone.

On Capel street a short, middle aged man passes me. Bald, with a close cropped grey beard, he wears pale blue crocs, a huge pair of square diamond earrings and a short purple skirt. People lean out of doorways to stare. Love to know where he’s going.

On Abbey Street a figure emerges from the Garda Ombudsman building. An angry slouch, thin shoulders poised in an attitude beneath a hoodie. Cigarette, mobile, gold hoops, one blade haircut. Slouching along in that rolling, open crotched, alpha-male waddle so beloved of the city gurriers, she passes me, bellowing away into her phone.

The city is playing with me today.

On I go, I pass a woman I knew as a child. Twenty years or more have passed. She does not notice me and I walk on, lost in a web of memories strung amongst the familiar streets.

Photo owned by Gene Hunt (cc)

Well, that about wraps up my month of daily postings here on the blog. It was fun and a bit taxing, but a good way to kickstart the year. It cleared out the old brainpipes and purged some half baked ideas I had floating around in there.

I’ll be posting regularly, I hope, but not daily. More things are hurtling down multiple pipelines toward me at breakneck speed. Not least of which is the Top-Uncling I’ll be doing with my brand new nephew. At the moment he seems to just sleep, drink and poo himself, that’s the kind of lifestyle I can get my head around.

I have foolishly signed up for some Open University courses, which start *gulp* tomorrow. One of them even has maths in it, but the other has assignments on Lastfm. Sure that’s just the internet, how hard can it be?

Thanks for all your comments and listening to me rabbiting on over the past month.

To the newest Murphy.

Eldest of this next generation, you will glimpse the future before all others who follow on.

You will hear us give advice and make your own way anyhow, and be all the better for it.

You will grow up in this new century and think us throwbacks from the last one, old and quaint.

Your generation will do things and see things none of us alive today have even the faintest notion of.

You will be loved.

Welcome to the world Ruairí, it’s a wonderful, terrifying, spectacular ride from here on out.

——

A very special congratulations to Fin and Lesley. Well done you guys, you did good!

It’s proper snow here in Dublin tonight, the first proper snow in these parts for many a long year. Other more momentous events are happening too, but more of that anon.

Snow always reminds me of this clip from The Young Ones. The one where they are broke and Neil makes ‘risotto’.

Good old Youtubes, dontcha just love the internet sometimes.

Photo owned by back_garage (cc)

Him upstairs is drilling again. He’s been drilling for five years. FIVE BLOODY YEARS! Chris thinks it may be body disposal, but that bastard Struthers has put it in my mind it’s some gimp suited horror and his perverted sex drills. I was ok when I thought he was carving up bodies like meat on a butcher’s slab, but now, now my sleep will be disturbed.

What’s he drilling up there? Who’s he drilling up there? How many shelves does one man need?

Perhaps he’s some kind of a cabinet pervert. He builds cabinets and crawls inside them, giggling all the while in the sweaty darkness and fumbling at his flies. Anything would be better than the pervert drilling machines. Afterwards, when they are filthy and useless to anyone, the evidence of his own depravity horrifies even him and must be destroyed. Out comes the drill again, creator and destroyer both.

It’s the only answer.

I’ll confront him on the stairs the next time I see him.

“Off to IKEA again Simon?”

“Oh yes, just have to…have to get some more cabinets.”

“Can’t keep you away from that place. How many trips is it this month?”

“Twelve.”

“Simon.”

“Yes?”

“Do you…um.”

“Yes?”

“That is, the cabinets, do you um…you know.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, oh right, well fair enough then. It’s just someone on the internet thought that maybe you, you know.”

“What?”

“Were having sex with drills.”

“I’m reporting you to the residents committee Murphy, you are a fucking sick fuck and no mistake!”

“Right ho, toodle pip.”

Of course, it is well known that before my  space program days I spent some time in the U.S.  Until now that period in my life has been classified information. I can now reveal to the public my involvement in a top secret super-soldier program run by the Reagan Administration to create an army of super-powered child vigilantes. My identity was a close kept government secret and this rare photograph shows me relaxing with our superteam mentor Brass General, before embarking on a mission into Soviet Russia.

I don’t like to talk about it, but my I’m proud of my part in the downfall of the Evil Empire. President Reagan himself awarded me the Black Cross, the secret U.S. Military honour for bravery, and the thanks of a grateful nation, before signing my deportation papers and sending me back home to Ireland forever.

‘Single Malt,’ were there ever two more beautiful words in the English language? The single malt is the king of whiskeys. True appreciation comes only with long years of intense and strenuous practice. I present my small collection of single malts in no particular order of merit and my tastes and experiences are purely subjective.

Talisker, by God what a drink! Hailing from the Isle of Skye, this is what a single malt is all about. A fine starter malt for a virgin drinker, it delivers a rich tasty experience, but will not punish you the way a Laphrohaig or a Springbank will. Easy on the tongue, with a smooth, sweet taste and the merest hint of the smokiness one associates with the peatier malts. Only a hint though.

Talisker has a lovely warm aftertaste that makes it one of my favourites. A single malt for long winter nights in front of a warm fire. I picked this bottle up on my last trip to France, where they appreciate a fine single malt. Over there one can be purchased in the local supermarket for a song. This 10 year old set me back €23 and wouldn’t be seen for less than €50 – €60 in Dublin.

It is little known that in the early 80’s I was selected to become a member of the Irish Child Space Program. Here you see me about to embark on our first mission to the Moon on the lunar orbiter LÉ Muirchú.

The catastrophic results of those early missions are still classified material and the the cash strapped program was abandoned by the mid eighties, replaced by a plan to fire plague ridden potatoes into Great Britain using a giant wavin pipe.