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 [...]

SCENE: A cafe in Tallaght.
THE GURRIER and THE GIN LADY sit at a table, drinking coffee. A conversation drifts over the quiet hubbub of the cafe.
LADY 1: Yeah, I’m gettin’ mink eyelashes put on.
LADY 2: Mink?
LADY 1: Yeah, they’re mad expensive so they are, like €200.
LADY 2: €200?
LADY 1: Yeah, I want the pink ones [...]

A quick one from the 2008 unposted archive.
Oh local newspapers, how do I love thee.
This article appeared in the Blanch Gazette and I quote from it liberally as no comment is necessary.
Suspended sentences for identical twins
Drug-addicted identical twin brothers who hid their faces with tea towels when they robbed €42 worth of Easter eggs on [...]

Irish Hybird Cars

They run on dead pigeons.

(image by John Picken)

In the long forgotten depths of prehistory when the internet was run on steampipes and hand cranked babbage machines, there existed a site known and feared amongst publicans throughout the land. That place was BeerandLoathing. The men who laboured alone and unloved in that bleak place are now long dead. [...]

The message scrawled on the door reads:
‘Now my finger is dirty’
and below,
‘So’s your mot‘
(Searching for a link for Mot, I came upon this lovely gem: ‘A Mouth like a Malahide cod’ – someone who never shuts up.)

The Dublin street bin. Harbinger of decay, reliquary of unholy debris. Other countries may have trash cans, litter receptacles, garbage chutes, cleansing units. Dublin has caliginous black bins. Black as the darkest night of the soul, repositories of taint and corruption. Bursting through the uneven streetscape like the broken rotten tooth stumps of ancient giants. [...]

I almost caught one today.
The family home is in the south inner city. In twenty five years there it has exposed me to many of the seedier sides of Dublin life. Countless breaks ins, handbag snatches, muggings, car thefts, home invasions, drug addicts, drug dealers, escaped convicts, murderers on the run, brothels, prostitutes, pimps, pet [...]