Naked elvis

It seems that in order to get traffic to come to a page like
this, that is more visitors, it is necessary to include key words.
If for instance your writing about about Elvis then to mention
that he was a great Gospel Singer and better than most of Black
Gospel Singers is guaranteed to up ones place in a search
engine. To remark on his contribution to Rock 'n Roll and to
his Gold Records and the fact of his being from Memphis. Just
naming these phrase or words is enough or so I've read to
increase the number of people visiting. At least that's what I
have read, its what the experts say, but whether it works or
not I have no idea. This Elvis essay is my way of finding out.
What would happen if I inserted a phrase such as Naked Elvis.
Or to say yet again that he is the Greatest Gospel singer of
all time which if not true is not too far off the mark.
The first record I ever got was "Let's have a Party"
and I still listen to it to this day. And my favorite dvd of him
is his last concert when he had become Fat and unhealthy.
His voice never deserted him and these last Concerts were
in my humble opinion his Greatest. I would like to have
met him just to say thank you for all the pleasure he brought
into our lives.
I have never been to Graceland and never will I guess but
then again I don't need to visit a monument, all I have do is
listen to him singing "Walk a mile in my Shoes". It says
everything that needs to be said.

Perennials in my window

When I am not otherwise engaged with my busy life I find
myself gazing out my back window at the garden. It's not a
beautifull sight. There are few plants and to the best of my knowledge
no herbs and the only perennials the casual viewer might see are the
bins and old fridges lining the wall that separates it from its neighbour.
The soil is a mixture of stones and broken brick, no gardening is
done here and its doubtfull if anything would grow. There are no trees.
But its a garden for all that and it seems strangely in tune with my
life. There is nothing here that will shock or shake or cause the
world to stop and remark on its being, there are few suprises and
no great beauty. The soil is barren and littered with the debris of an
unremarkable life.

Vicar street

Its a bank holiday here in Dublin today so I just went for
a walk and took some photo's. If you buy live cds of Dylan
and artists like that then you will have heard of Vicar Street.
I have never actually been in the place and only tried to
go once but the place was sold out in less than two minutes
as Bob Dylan was playing there.
The Harley in the window was owned by a man called
Gaye Byrne who was the host of the longest running
talk show in tv history. He sold it for charity and the
guy who owns Vicar Street must have bought it. It
was given to him as a retirement present from U2.
Its a nice looking bike if your a right wing impotent
red neck out to impress but personally I would rather
have an old Triumph any day.

Satellite tv

I went out a few months ago and bought a satellite dish and
receiver. As I live in a one room flat and my landlord wont let
me put holes in the wall I could not get cable so I decided to
try the free to air satellite option. As well as not allowing me to
put any holes in the wall inside my room he also said that I
could not make any in the outside wall either so I read up about
this stuff on the web and came across some guy in Scotland
who had one inside his house and said it worked for him. So
anyway I bought the gear and sat the dish in a chair beside
my window and 'hey presto' it worked so now I have maby six
or seven BBC and ITV channels and several hundred shopping
stations and god channels to choose from.
There are days when I spend hours glued to the tv wondering
to myself what sort of morons watch these programmes. All
those advertising channels and all of them selling stuff that
no one would dream of buying if they saw the saw it in a shop.
And as for the god stations,they are just downright scary. Both
the point of view they are expressing and also the people who
presumable belive all this crap. And there are of course a few
girlie ones as well which are devoted to trying to get men to
phone in at a premium rate just to listen to some sexy talk.
The women are not paticularly attractive and some are
downright awful to look at. So when I'm bored and with
nothing to do, which is often I can now melt my brain in front
of the tv set.
When I want a change I can play my x box or ps2 but to be
honest I am getting bored with them. My latest x box purchase
is "Wings of War" which is I suppose all right but I have
hardly played it. For a guy who is poor you might wonder
how I can afford to have all this stuff but I don't buy much
food and only have lunch twice or three times a week and
never, and I do mean never go out in the evening so I live
quite cheaply. And half the stuff I buy is comfort buying and
it doesn't give me any real pleasure.
But now, as the good book would have it, I'm saved. I've found
a righteous path and seen the light and have joined the ranks
of the anointed and joined the church of blogging.
I wonder how long it will last.

The republic

Ninety years ago almost to the day Ireland became an independent
nation and yesterday there was an auction here in Dublin in which
an original copy of the proclamation of that event was sold at a
Dublin auction house along with an original draft of the national
anthem and various other items all of them national treasures.
It was I belive Bob Dylan who said that "money doesn't talk, it
screams." and it was screeching its head off at the auction with
something in the region of three million euros changing hands.
Many of those who died fighting for an Irish Republic must be
turning it their graves and if ever proof were needed that we are
a gombeen state then this is it. Ireland is changing and changing
fast and not for the better. The curse of Ireland was alway
landlordism and now the whole population is motivated only by
the desire to own property and to exploit those who do not.
There was a time when people were not motivated by money
alone. When I was a child I can remember how my father would
send Irish Sweepstake tickets all over the world to help raise
money for the state and he and many like him would then put
some of their own money in with the receipts and consider it
a privilege to have the opportunity to help the country. But those
were different days and my father died many years age and
he died in England. The values of those days are long gone as are
the people who embodied them. Or at least most of the
people are gone but some are still to be found in the homeless
shelters of Britain, unwanted by the state and perceived as
nothing more than an embarrassment.
Yes, we have come a long way and god knows how far we
can go yet but we have lost more than we could ever realize
along the way. We are the second richest country in the
world and yet a bankrupt nation.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

In an effort to keep my readers happy I have decided to share
with you those blogs which I , for whatever reason find interesting.
Some of you may have already visited these sites but they will
be new to others.
I've only been at this game for a short time now and as yet I don't
have many sites that I visit on a regular basis but one, for some
reason or other keeps drawing me back to it. There is a lady in
Maryland who likes to get a bargain. Now before you say, "But
don't we all like a baragin", there is a difference between wanting
to get something cheap and turning it into the focus of your life.
Chris in Maryland, for that's who I'm on about, seems a perfectly
normal lady but after reading her blog a couple of times I then
went on to check out her profile only to discover that her
favorite book is called, "How to make people think your normal".
She's a married lady but god knows how long that will last as
her long suffering husband must be on the verge by now.
As I say, she seems quite normal.......
But then again....they always do.
Pop in to her and say hello at http://yardsalequeen.blogspot.com

You can all join in

It's just gone 6:00 pm and I have arrived home after
visiting my local charity shop. I managed to find an LP
there while I was rooting around the junk. It's called,
"you can all join in" and features Jethro Tull, Spooky
Tooth, Free and several other groups from the 70's.
I would have been happy with this find if it were
not for the fact that as I walked in the door of the shop
a young girl was on her way out with some Beatles and
Pink Floyd records which sort of took the good out of
the one I got.
But its a beautifull sunny evening here so I was not
too down about it. I have been back in my flat now for
an hour or so and the girl in the flat next to me is singing
her lungs out with the help of a karaoke machine while
the young men in the flat below are playing thump, thump
thump music. This kind of thing is going on every night
and has been doing so for years but as I mentioned in
one of my earlier posts I have no rights as a tenant here.
I spend a lot of time walking the street to get away from
the noise. And to have to do that, to have to walk the streets
because you just can't sit in your home ( for it is my home)
is dreadfull. But in Ireland if you don't own property
then you are just not regarded as a citizen. You have no
rights. None. So your rights are dependant on your wealth.
And if you don't have money.......

My room

I live in a one room flat in a place called Donnybrook in
the city of Dublin. I have one window which looks out on a
rather shabby back garden. I have been here now for about
sixteen years. I am about a thirty minute walk from the city
centre and maby twenty minutes from Sandymount strand
which was made famous by James Joyce in Ulysses.
Seamus Heany's house is also looking onto this beach. I had
the pleasure of being in his little work room as he talked
about his poetry while we watched the tide go out.
This general area of Dublin still retains much of the architecture
of Joyce's time. The poet Thomas Kinsella's house is on the banks
of the canal a few minutes from me and Patrick Kananagh used
to live in a bedsitter on Raglan Road just up the road.

I walk these streets every day.

Wet evening in april

The birds sang in the wet trees
And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now
And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.
But I was glad I had recorded for him
The melancholy.

Patrick Kavanagh.
1904--67.

Tom the bus driver

He lives in the flat next door to me. He's in his thirties and drives
a bus around Dublin for a living but for several years he studied
horticulture. I mentioned to him that I had tried on several occasions
to grow some kind of plant in my room but always without success.
Even a cactus I had died on me.
So he gave me a pot plant, an evergreen I suppose you could
call it, whose proper name is Sansevieria Trifasciata but is more
commonly knows as mother in laws tongue. As I have no garden
and am stuck in this one roomed flat I need some kind of plant
or green growing thing to help keep me sane and there is something
very therapeutic about a pot plant, indeed just having one in the
room has a calming effect.
But most important of all it thrives on neglect so you can more
or less just ignore it and it will remain healthy. The plant itself
is poisonous, that is if you eat the leaves, and causes a swelling
of the tongue. It was popular with the Victorians.

I must be talking to myself

Well, at least thats how it feels much of the time. I do have visitors
to this page, not many but a few drop in from time to time and I
feel I should have something to say to them but as I don't know who
they are I am at a disadvantage. After all, I don't want to alienate
those few folks who actually read this. And what indeed am I to
write?. Should I write about my life as a 'poor' older guy living in
this city of Dublin and would it be of interest to my readers?. It
seems odd to decribe oneself as poor. I don't think of myself in that
way but the reality is that by the normal standards of life here that is
is exactley what I am. Just today on the tv here it said that Ireland is
now the second richest country in the world when it comes to
personal wealth and thats easy to belive if you were to live here for
any period of time. What they don't shout about is the fact that if
you get sick here you might just find yourself lying on a trolly in the
public area of some hospital for a week or more before you get any
treatment. But then again most people just don't seem to care.
But poverty is boring as well as being a real downer. So maby I had
better start writing about the good things. I'm going to think hard
on this as I'm sure there are lots of things that will uplift my readers
if only I could think of them. And of course as my mother used to
say, "there is always someone worse off", which is true but does
not really help. Ah well, as Leonard Cohen says....
"let sing another songs boys
this one's old and bitter"
A great man is Leonard. A philosopher and a poet. A scholar and
a gentleman. Where would all the miserable people be without him?.
"and there are no chocolates in the boxes anymore
and there are no diamons in the mine"

You never said a truer word Lenny.