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Welcome

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Welcome to Old Ireland.   My initial idea for this site was to cover only classic vehicles, but since classicireland.ie was already taken and the best alternative I could find was this one, my thoughts for the site began to broaden.   A lot of the inspiration for this comes from the few magazines for which I have written articles.   Let’s get these mentioned early, because you should not be surprised to see a little of their influence here.   Real Classic is subscription only in print, but also has an excellent site at https://www.real-classic.co.uk/ , where Frank, Rowena and a host of writers entertain and inspire.   Then there is Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly, formerly in print monthly, but now only on line at http://mnmotorcycle.com / (unfortunately now obsolete.  You will need to use the Wayback machine to find it).   MMM’s archives could keep you reading happily for months, and the like it or not truths told by Thomas Day (Geezer with a grudg...
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Revamped, and free again for a few days. And a free short story too.

 I've posted about publishing a book on Amazon here before on Amazon:   The Other Road eBook : Caswell, Ian: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store To celebrate me eventually having time to rewrite the start of the story it will be available on Kindle FREE for five days from 1st May.  A paperback version will be available shortly too.  I initially worked hard to keep the word count down, because the publisher I had been going to use recommended a 30,000 word limit, their logic being that this would keep the purchase cost down, thus encouraging more people to give a new author a chance.  30,000 words was never going to happen, but it did give me some sort of guide.  Given the sales of the book so far, I can confirm that cutting down the word count does not work. My efforts to keep the word count down led that first part of the story to be incredibly information dense, with huge monologues etc.  Although I was always unhappy with this, I thought ignoring the ex...
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Tech and modern cars.

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 My old Astra was getting to be a real pain.  The noise from somewhere underneath continued (see my original write up on it), but additional, hard to trace problems were also building up.  It had started to leak somewhere around the boot too, yet I could see no good reason for this since the seals were good.  This got to the point where, over time, the recess for the spare wheel filled up and the water then sloshed around sufficiently that it started to soak through the foam of the rear seat, making it damp.  The inside of the windows were often dripping with moisture too, and demisting took an age.  Last autumn and winter here were exceptionally wet, and this was a constant source of annoyance.  Since building an extension on our house a few years I no longer have direct access to my garage, and have to work on the car out in the street. I have to admit that although the bodywork was in good condition, the constant niggles with this car, most of which...
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Whisky Galore - The Irish version......almost.

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This will be a little convoluted at first, but please persevere.  I first got interested in this story because of an old book I was reading.  Like me, you may think that climate change is a relatively new concept.  Google says different, and it is right, the concept may have gained popularity and significance in the last 60 or 70 years, but it is not new. This is what Google has to say on the subject:  "While the concept of human-caused climate change dates back to the 19th century, the phrase "climate change" gained prominence in the 1950s-1970s. Gilbert Plass used the phrase in 1956". The old book mentioned above is called Ulster Folklore, by Elizabeth Andrews, which was published in 1913.  I can't say that I would recommend it (the supposed science in it can't have been good at the time, and age has not helped it), but at least the book is short.  From page one, it is filled with bad science, most of which seems to attempt to link all the old folk t...
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Paranoid? Who, me?

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 Personally, I wouldn't touch any products from Meta (Or many other tech companies) with the proverbial barge pole.  I even know a few ex-programmers who have left the business, and dumped their PC's entirely!  These machines have become (and are still becoming) far too intrusive, and I hate this kind of information/ marketing push.  If I want something, I'll go and look for it. There are alternatives which are less bad.  Take the snip of posts below.  These are fairly old now, but you can bet with absolute certainty that Farcebook et al are not providing this crap for your welfare.  If you do use Farcebook, please check your account settings as shown.  They should under no circumstances (IMHO), have this level of access to very personal information.
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Setting a good example.

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Did you ever see the 2006 film Idiocracy?  If not, see if you can find it.  It seems to be becoming more true every day. The ad below, or a version of it, for a very, very simple computer game pops up at the side of my screen sometimes when I'm on the internet.  On every version, there are a number of towers, each of which has an imprisoned girl at the top.  From watching the ad's animation, the point of it seems to be to rescue the girls by killing all those who stand in your way.  The method of killing is very simple too.  If the number beside them is lower than yours, you win, if not, they win.  So, the only 'skill' in the whole thing seems to be the ability to tell if one clearly displayed number is higher than another!  There are other, equally simplistic parts of this game advertised from time to time.  It really doesn't look like it ever gets better than the part I'm showing here. What a pathetic game.  Firstly, it can only be for...
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