At an AA meeting:- And finally a Christmas one.  Happy Christmas everyone.   😊

  It’s almost Christmas, so I thought I’d test your knowledge, (or your guessing ability perhaps?).   Below are some quotes from the books, poems or short stories of famous writers through the ages.   It’s probably too much to expect you to be able to guess which story these quotes come from, but have a guess about the authors without Googling these to see if you can recognise the style of the writing.   Some of them may surprize you.   The answers are further down the page.   1)        1)  I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what is particularly dead about a door nail.   I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest bit of ironmongery in the trade.   But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done.   2)        2)   There has been some talk latel...

 Yeah, OK.  That title might be very optimistic, given the diminutive size of the publisher concerned, and the fact that I make up a mere one thirty ninth of the content, but I now have a fiction story in print. Legiron books ( Home - Leg Iron Books ), have seen fit to publish a short story that I submitted to them in their latest compilation of Halloween based stories.  It is out now on Amazon in both paper and Kindle format ( Monster: Underdog Anthology 24 eBook : Hillman, H.K., Doo, Roo B., Ellott, Mark , Royer, Daniel, Duffy, S. W. , Stones, Adam D., Caswell, Ian, Bidgood, Lee, Walker, David D., Lombardi, Nicola: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store ) I have to admit that zombies and all that supernatural stuff is really not my style, but since this is a Halloween based compilation, I had to go with the flow.  As a result of my aversion to supernatural based stories, I can't even tell you that I enjoyed all the stories in the book.  Some are distinctly better than oth...

There are a number of reasons not to buy an electric car over their petrol powered cousins.  Below are just a few.  I have used the cheapest options where possible. 1) Cost. In the UK, the cheapest available electric car is currently the Dacia Spring, costing from £14,995 upwards, depending on specification.  It has a claimed range of only 140 miles (Electrifing.com estimate a real world range of 100 miles, with a worst case estimate of only 70 miles in cold weather), and it takes around 5 hours to charge at a charging station.  As such, it is described as a city car.  Given those figures, you certainly aren't going to go continental touring in it!  A 5 hour wait every 100 miles would prove somewhat tiresome. The similarly sized, petrol powered,  Dacia Sandero is available from £13,795.  That is £1200 cheaper, and you won't need to install a charging station at home to be able to use the Sandero.  The carwow site estimates around £2000 for th...

 Sorry, I seem to be posting a lot about this conflict, but this is worth viewing, and if you are not in the UK, you may not have seen this issue.  Good journalism on the part of Paraic O'Brien.  Scary stuff! Hardline Israeli settlers gather to plan future homes in Gaza strip – Channel 4 News

 See also:  Rogue State? (oldandireland.blogspot.com) And:  Two Wrongs……. (oldandireland.blogspot.com) So we have reached the one year mark in Israel’s conflict in Gaza.   Time for a little reflection. 1)     After the original and totally horrific Hamas attack, questions were asked about how the Israeli security agency had apparently managed to completely miss all the preparations that must have been necessary for the attack.   I must point out here that I am making no excuses for the Hamas attack.   It was brutal, appalling, inhuman (continue to insert your own descriptives here, none of them will fully describe just how wrong the Hamas attack was).   Any questions raised about the Israeli security agency seem to somehow to have been lost in the brutality and genocide that have happened since the original attack. I was wondering about this though.   The agency that managed to miss a Hamas breakout of that size, does not sound ...

  HED Map Viewer 2024 (arcgis.com) The map showing archaeological sites here in Northern Ireland that I used in my last piece is well worth a mention in its own right (see the link at the top of this page).  It is a government site, but is open to the public, so there are no issues in using it.  There are many layers, from ones showing shipwrecks and aircraft crashes, to historic maps, battle sites, and even lidar surveys in some areas.   Pick on  a link that interests you, and click in.  There are often further links to other sites and even back to the original archaeological reports on many of them.  To those who don't live in Northern Ireland, sorry, you will have to find something similar for your own locality.  But here, there is a real warren of interesting information and links that will keep anyone with an interest occupied for hours. Many of the sites local to me I knew about, but there are a few that are new to me, including an intr...

This map layer shows only historic sites and monuments.  Unfortunately it shows only those in Northern Ireland, but just imagine the number of sites there must be across the whole island.   As you can see from the map above, we aren't short of archaeological sites in this part of the world.  There are the three spectacular tombs in the Boyne valley, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, ( Brú na Bóinne Visitor Centre: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth | Heritage Ireland ).  The huge Giants Ring in Belfast, ( Giant's Ring | Department for Communities (communities-ni.gov.uk) ).  Maeve's grave in Co. Sligo, ( Queen Maeve Trail – Knocknarea – Sligo Walks .  There are thousands of others too including, as below, the stone circle at Ballynoe, about 5 miles outside Downpatrick ( Ballynoe ‘Stone Circle’ | Department for Communities (communities-ni.gov.uk) ). It dates from the Neolithic to the bronze age, so from about 4000 years ago, and has links to the Boyne Valley monumen...

 So Donny got shot in the ear.  I'll not make the comment that I have heard from some over here about the accuracy of the gunman.  No one deserves to be shot, not even Trump.  Perhaps it will make him a little open to arguments about gun control in the states.  I'm pretty sure that the founding fathers vision of the right to carry arms didn't include assault rifles, and that they would never have considered putting the right to carry into the US constitution if they had been able to imagine such weapons. Anyway, I'm sure you have seen some of the ridiculous side stories that have appeared as a result of Donny's ear piercing?  Perhaps he got shot because he was just too slow to react when his secret service guards shouted, "Donald, duck!" 1)   Trump supporters have started wearing bandages on their ears as a show of support!  I have to admit that I did a double take on this when I first saw it.  It is a sign of their love apparently!...

 Just to prove that I'm not a completely grumpy old git, I thought I should report on two short trips that we did since our stay at The Ballygally Hotel (Hastings Hotel Group).  See this post for my rather disappointed review of that hotel:   Yet another gripe. (oldandireland.blogspot.com) . Both of these hotels were around the same price, and probably a bit cheaper than the Ballygally, yet were infinitely superior in every respect.  What's not to like? 1)  The Salthouse, Ballycastle:   The Salthouse Hotel | Luxury Hotel in Ballycastle, Co Antrim This is a new hotel set on a hill just outside the town of Ballycastle.  It has tremendous views north to Rathlin Island which is about three miles off shore, and to the Scottish Isles and coast beyond that.  Both Isla and Jura are visible on a good day.  Look west, and you will see Donegal, on the East the cliffs of Fairhead.  It is a stunning setting.  The rooms are comfortable,...

  I mentioned previously that we built an extension onto our house last year.   The work only finished around the start of November, so this summer there has been some remedial work to be done outside.   Before I get into the project at hand, a little background info might make me reasoning clearer.   Our house was built in the early 1960’s, and when we first moved in everything needed to be done.   There was no central heating, the kitchen was the original early 60’s one, no insulation, etc. etc.   At the edge of the front driveway, someone had built (very badly) a raised flower bed with two rows of old granite cobble stones.   It was just the right height so that the car door banged on it every time we parked in the narrow drive, so it had to go.   Meanwhile in the back garden was a large mound that was covered with weeds.   I presumed it was just soil or perhaps builder’s rubble.     When I eventually got time to dea...

 Today is polling day here in the UK for Westminster elections.  The picture above is real.  It is on a lamppost outside Belfast's Lanyon Place railway station, and is perhaps the most accurate comment I have seen so far about this election.   Still, the right to vote is not available to everyone in this world, and is important, so if you are in the UK  make sure to use your vote to select the least worst Muppet available to you.  Remember, if you don't vote, you can't complain about the mob that do eventually get into Westminster!  :-)

 There was a little discussion on Grandad's site last week ( One for the birds – Head Rambles ) about how versatile and intelligent some birds could be.  I had added a comment about birds enjoying cat baiting as a spectator sport at the bottom of our garden: " They are smart though Grandad. We heard a racket at the bottom of our garden years ago, loads of small birds chirping in what sounded like excitement. When we went to look, there were loads of sparrows, blue tits etc (at least 30, possibly more), all as high in the canopy as possible. Below them, much lower, and in complete silence was a magpie, carefully monitoring a cat that was a few steps behind it. Every time the cat moved, the magpie enticed it further and further up the tree. This went on for half an hour or so until the cat was on tiny branches that were much too small for it, where one eventually broke, and the cat fell (with no apparent harm). The audience of small birds were there the whole time calling their ...

 I found this old article of predictions for 2020. Boy, that really didn't work out did it?  It is completely out of context, so I have no idea where it was originally published.  Instead of moving entire towns around the globe, we were stuck in them come rain or shine because of all the lockdowns.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so this makes interesting reading today.  Enjoy.  :-) 20 Hilarious Predictions about the year 2020 made long ago  "We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."    It’s hard to fathom that we’re just 14 months away from the year 2020. There’s something about those four numbers together that just sound futuristic, like a date that George Jetson or Flash Gordon would have signed on their checks. If you asked us ten or even twenty years ago what we expected in the year 2020, we probably would’ve guessed that we’d all be eating synthetic food pills and being served by robot butlers. But ask us the same question now and our...