As usual, more pics below the fold

Read more

________________________

Also

Limerick holiday Weekend 2008 - Part 2

Limerick Holiday Weekend 2008 - Part 3

The bartender, Pete, is a friendly, talkative sort. He’s about sixty-five and he’s been around. Back in the Sixties, Pete spent some time in the Nam, doing unspecified service for an unspecified government agency. 

He didn’t like the work, and when war broke out Pete decided he wanted something more congenial, so he took a job on the Alaska pipeline. Of course, he spotted instantly that I’m Irish, so he tells me about his relatives in Kerry.  He once tried to visit them, Pete says, but never got outside the Gresham Hotel in Dublin because he found a forgotten half ounce of coke in his suitcase.  Pete’s led a varied life. 

There’s a huge crane at a building site across the road. I noticed it on the way up, an enormous tracked thing on a timber ramp. Three guys come in, obviously builders, and the one with the baseball cap is loud, obnoxious, aggressive, drunk. He’s a Bruce Dern lookalike, and he’s got a filthy mouth. 

Pete the bartender is a model of urbane diplomacy.

Gentlemen, he says, please, I beg you. There are ladies present. Moderate your language.

The guys get the message and shut up.

Even Bruce knows what Pete is telling him: I could kill you if I wanted. He goes away, to everyone’s relief.

His two buddies are OK, if a bit rough. Richie and Tom are friendly enough and they want to talk to the half-drunk Irish tourist.

The heavier one, Richie, is from a New York Irish family. Long Island.  We fall into conversation, and after a few drinks, Richie reveals that he did time for doing “a bad thing”. I don’t want to push him on this, so I just listen.

Yeah, he says, I was a bad man when I was younger. He’s about 40.

Tom looks like a beaten-up Robert Redford.  He’s from California, and he surfs.  All Tom talks about is surfing and how he got on the cover of every major magazine in the business. I’m inclined to believe him. He’s maybe mid-forties, but he’s lean and he has the Look.

What are you doing on a construction site? I ask him.

Aw, he says, it’s winter time. Evenings, I make surfboards, and all summer I just surf.

Yeah, I believe him.

Richie says, I was a real bad man.

Really bad? I say.

Surfin’ and women, Tom says.

He’s a pussy-magnet, Richie says.

No I’m not, says Tom, brushing back his blond hair.

I don’t know which of them to look at. Tom’s here and Richie’s at the other side of me. I’m in the middle, half drunk. They’re smoking my cigarettes. These things European?

I killed five people, says Richie.

Did you, says Tom, more interested in the young woman at the other end of the bar. I never knew that.

That’s cos I didn’t fuckin’ tell you, spits Richie.  He sips his beer and nods at me.  These days, I don’t even jaywalk.

Pete, the bartender, is going off duty and now I’m frightened.  At least when he was here, Richie might have been too scared to murder me, but now Pete is going home.  

A new bartender appears. A young-looking fellow.

I bet he’s a fucking queer, says Richie.

Yeah, Tom agrees.

Hey, Buddy, you a fucking queer? Richie shouts at the new bartender. Hey, you. What’s your fucking name, faggot?

The bartender ambles over. He’s a Clark Kent double and he has this sardonic but open smile.

Alden, he says. He’s not bothered by this.

Kind of a fuckin name is that?  Richie demands.

There’s a scream and suddenly Tom is standing on the counter top.

Alden!!!

How the fuck did he do that?

I only ever knew one Alden in my fucking life! Jesus Christ, Alden!

The bartender examines him with a friendly, quizzical grin, and recognition dawns.

Tom? Is that you, Tom? Jeez man, you cut your hair.

The fuck is this? says Richie, but the other two have forgotten him.

Tom is dancing on the counter, screaming at the patrons.

I didn’t see this guy since High School. Christ, this man is my fuckin hero! Alden! Jesus Christ, man, what the fuck you doin’ in New York? Christ, we used to, we used to . . . remember the time we – Jesus Christ, man.

I think he’s going to cry.

Richie isn’t impressed. He wants to unburden himself and it looks like I’m about to receive his lifetime’s angst. All I wanted was a drink, but what can I do? I can’t very well tell him to go to hell, because apart from anything else, he might kill me.

What did you do? I ask.

Knocking over drugstores he says. They hand over the pills, they’re OK. Otherwise, it’s the knife.

Knife?

I cut ‘em. Five of them.

I’m appalled.

But we did fourteen stores, he adds, quickly, as if that makes it all right. I’m glad I’m so drunk or I might make a sudden move, and in this man’s company, such a thing could be fatal.

Drugs for yourself?

Nah! For the money.

Alden and Tom are onto their second year at High School, and they don’t give a shit about killers or drunken Irish tourists. They’re away in a far better place and nothing will make them give it up for now, if they can help it. Can’t say I blame them. Richie is still going on about what he did, what his father thought of him, his time in prison, his kids, his divorce. I listen, but he’s saying nothing at all about five dead people or their families.

Without warning, he grabs his coat.  Gotta go.

Good. As he moves past me, he grabs at his wrist and pulls off his watch.

Take it, he says.

I don’t want it.

Give it to someone who needs it. And he’s gone.

Jesus.

Alden detaches himself from Tom and looks at me with concern. He says nothing, but he smiles and shakes his head.

Here, he says, and places a beer on the counter. It’s on me.

There’s nothing I can say about this.  You either get it or you don’t.

Here’s Pat Shortt Dylan Shine.

The wild garlic is in flower again and, though some people think it’s a weed, I love to see it spreading around the garden.  It tells me Summer can’t be far away.

Wild garlic spreads at a gigantic rate and it fills the garden with delicate white flowers through March and April.  Every part of the plant is edible, and it has wonderful medicinal properties, including the ability to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol.  Everyone should eat it.

I dug up a big pile of wild garlic at the weekend, and I’ll be happy to give it to anyone who wants some.  A lot of people took up my offer already so I’m going to be busy with deliveries, but I don’t mind.  Why would I mind?  It’s good.  I might even manage to barter the garlic for something else.  A couple of fish or a few carrots, maybe.  Who knows?  Life is full of possibilities.

Not only that, but it creates connections between people with a shared interest in food and cooking, which is always good.  I love cooking, though I wish I was a better at it, but I’ll keep trying.  

Today I made a delicious soup with roasted peppers, tomatoes and the wild garlic stems.  I made a nice pesto from the bulbs and added a little bit to the soup too.  I had it with croutons and a nice glass of Montepulciano.

Now I’m full so I might head out to the garden and finish the wine while I watch the sun going down.

After that, I think I’ll head into town.  People will be playing music in my pub of choice and I feel like a chat and a couple of pints.

Life is hard.

What do the Irish Times, the Independent, RTE, the BBC, the Daily Mail, the Irish Examiner, the Guardian and Sky News have in common?

Will I tell you?

They all come behind Bock the Robber (at No 1) in Google.ie searches for Josef Fritzl or Elisabeth Fritzl, with this post:

Josef Fritzl, Elisabeth Fritzl and Echoes of a Concentration Camp

This is nice to know, since most Irish bloggers, including me, have no resources at all, and no staff, unlike the MSM.

Maybe we should tell the Limerick Leader

Some stories defeat the imagination, and I think the news coming from Amstetten in Austria is one of those stories.  The depravity of this man, who imprisoned and raped his own daughter for 31 years, quite properly leaves all decent people baffled.  No matter how I try, I can’t get my brain to process this information in any meaningful way.

Josef Fritzl started sexually abusing his child in 1977.  Elisabeth was 11 years old.  In 1984, he drugged the poor girl and locked her in a specially-adapted cellar, where she remained for almost 24 years, and where she gave birth to seven children as a result of continual rape by her father.

Fritzl forced his daughter to write a note so that the police would believe she’d run away or joined a religious cult.  It worked.  His wife continued to live at the house without ever finding out that her daughter was locked into the cellar.  Fritzl is such a violent, terrifying, domineering individual that no-one dared question him, and the cellar was forbidden territory, even to his wife.

The first of Elisabeth Fritzl’s children, Kerstin, was born in 1988 and the second, Stefan in 1989.

Four years later, somebody left a nine-month-old infant outside the house, with a note in Elisabeth’s handwriting.

In 1994, another baby was left outside the house, also with a note, and Elisabeth’s parents became the baby’s foster parents.

In 1996, twins were born but one of the babies died within a few days.  Josef Fritzl burned it in the furnace.  A year later, he took the other twin upstairs to live with him and his wife.

Elisabeth had another baby, Felix, in 2002.  Fritzl kept this child in the cellar with Elisabeth and Kerstin who was then 14 years old.

Earlier this month, Kerstin was admitted to hospital with a life-threatening illness, and it was only then that the police began to suspect something was badly wrong.  A note from Elisabeth was found in Kerstin’s clothing and police appealed on television for Kerstin’s mother to contact them.  Fritzl had no choice but to release Elisabeth, Stefan and Felix from the cellar.  Neither Kerstin, Stefan nor Felix had ever seen daylight in their entire lives.

When Elisabeth, now 42, and Josef Fritzl, 73, went to the hospital, he was arrested for sexual abuse and abduction.

Elisabeth and all the children are in care. Kerstin is still in a critical condition.

Those are the bald facts, but behind them there’s a universe of suffering.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that women have been locked up and abused in Amstetten.  During WW2, the town was home to two Nazi concentration camps — one for women only.  They were both sub-camps of Mauthausen, where 65,000 prisoners were murdered.  All camps were staffed by local people, including the brutal female camp guards and I imagine many of today’s citizens can still remember their concentration camp.  Some of them are the children of the murderers and torturers who ran it.

The camp was still in operation when Josef Fritzl was 10 years old and there can be no doubt that it was a significant part of his formative years, as it was to many of Amstetten’s citizens.  Isn’t it remarkable that, just as in 1939-45, the locals noticed nothing?  Isn’t it remarkable that Elisabeth Fritzl’s mother, Rosemarie, noticed nothing over 24 years, and believed the word of an overbearing loudmouth?  What does that remind you of?

Who knows?  Perhaps evil really can seep into the stones of a town.

Or a country.

It seems Austria has a great ability to ignore ugly facts.  Fritzl was convicted of rape in the Sixties, when he already had four children.  The police don’t think this is relevant as it happened more than fifteen years ago, and it didn’t pose any obstacle when he became a legal foster parent to Elisabeth’s children.

With an official attitude like that, it’s no surprise that the Austrians have failed to deal with their Nazi past.  When an entire country is in denial about its part in a monstrous crime like the Holocaust, it’s easy to understand how a vicious thug like Fritzl could go unnoticed.

_____________________

Elsewhere:

The Guardian

Austria is a look-away society

Fritzl profile

Times Online

In the shadow of the Swastika

Fritzl children growl and coo to ’speak’ to each other

Former tenant: Fritzl’s son also went into cellar

Eolaí finally got his gallery organised and he has paintings on sale for two weeks only at hugely reduced prices .

Here’s the intro and here’s the gallery.

Eolaí’s offering free shipping worldwide, and the paintings are great value for money.

This one, for example, is painted on a panel, and Eolaí will ship it straight to your door for only US$85, which converts to about €55, including shipping.

He’s giving them away.

(By the way, I just bought this one).

Incidentally, this is Bock’s 1000th post.

Right.

Many of our people are already in place at the Ricoh stadium, and I’m receiving communications from Coventry by the minute.  There are 5,000 Saracens.  There are 20,000 of us.

Here in Limerick, a group of highly-trained special forces drinkers have taken control of strategic pubs with large screens and the logistics effort has swung into operation in earnest.  A band of public-spirited and entirely selfless taxi drivers have made the ultimate sacrifice and now, right across the city, are ferrying the red-clad home supporters to their stations.

Our boys in Coventry won’t be found wanting.

We won’t be found wanting.

Come what may, this is it.  Lose and we’re out.  Win and we’re back to Cardiff to meet the old enemy, Toulouse.

We’re ready.

______________

UPDATE

Munster won.  Holy fuck, what a game.  I thought I was going to have a coronary, except my doctor already told me my heart was perfect.  I thought I was going to have a stroke.  I thought I was going to have a conniption.

What does this mean?  Well, this means that the Bullet and myself are going to Cardiff again at the end of next  month.  This means we’re up for another road movie.  This means the Munster toon army is on the move yet again.

Look forward to photos.  Many photos.

Bock’s camera will be busy.

___________________________

Previously

Oh Yes, He’s the Great Zucchini

The Stringer try

This is it, boys, this is war

Jock Hunter