John Keyes – Journal
-
Plumbing Supplies in Dublin City Centre
I recently had need to acquire two ¾” flexible compression pipes. I was in Smithfield and the thought of having to get in the car to go get them wasn’t very appealing.
My usual port of call for such hardware requirements is to call into Lenehans on Capel Street. Unfortunately they only stocked ½” but they gave me the name of somewhere else I could try; Unit Supplies and Services, Dorset Street. I gave them a call and they had them in stock.
I cycled along Dorset Street for the guts of a year on my way to work and I’d never noticed this shop.
Image from Google StreetviewThey have everything you could need plumbing wise, and the lads working in there are lovely gentlemen. After handing over the cash for the pipes (which were very reasonably priced), I thought I’d try my luck and see if they stocked the Triton T40i booster pump.
I had tried three Triton stockists in Kilkenny, and none of them stocked it. One did say they could order it, the other two told me they don’t sell them. Unit had it in stock, so I decided to give these independent traders my business.
It saddens me that shops like this are not the norm anymore. In Portlaw, where I grew up, we had a great hardware store, Phil Fogarty’s. You could get anything you needed in there (or so it seemed to a young me anyway). If a room was being repainted, we’d head down there, and Phil would mix the colour you needed. If you needed a handful of nails or screws, they’d be wrapped in newspaper for you. It’s a shame that the current crop of superstores like Woodies, B&Q, and Atlantic are making it so hard for small shops like this to survive.
Here’s hoping that Lenehans and Unit Supplies and Services remain in business for a long time to come.
-
Ireland vs Wales — RWC 2011
Five point summary:
- Warburton
- Roberts
- Warburton
- Roberts
- Gatland
-
Televisual Treats
My new season of television includes the following:
- Terra Nova — meh
- Breaking Bad — excellent finale to a drawn out series.
- Dexter — potential to be a decent series.
- Pan Am — fluff with a bit of added steel in latest episode.
- Downton Abbey — I really want all of those girls to be happy (except O’Brien), they’re all lovely.
- Homeland — building up nicely, would like if Danes character was a little bit less on edge.
- Fades — the beeb continue their recent run of good shows (Sherlock, The Shadow Line)
- Boardwalk Empire — the battle for Atlantic City (and the entire East coast) is hotting up. Love the feel of this show.
-
Ireland vs Italy — RWC 2011
Five point summary:
- Castrogiovanni’s injury destroyed Italy’s game-plan.
- Murray and O’Gara justified their positions, their replacements were excellent when they came on too.
- Mike Ross is the silent scrum assassin.
- Ferris, and O’Brien: battering rams (with finesse) carrying the ball, and tackle magnets without it.
- Donnacha Ryan impressed again for his short period on the pitch.
-
Sexton Class
When you have the responsibility for place-kicking on a team you have to take the rough with the smooth. You get the kudos when things go well and when they don’t you have to take it on the chin. Everyone wants to play from the start but you have to respect the decisions that are made for the right reasons. It’s about the team, not the individual.
(Source: o2online.ie)
-
When is tall enough?
The Kingdom Tower will be 173 metres taller than the Burj Khalifa.
To put that into an Irish context, Liberty Hall is 60 metres tall, and the spire is 120 metres tall.
Unsurprisingly, 50 of the 100 tallest buildings have been constructed since 2000, a tall legacy of the property boom.
(Source: archidose.blogspot.com)
-
YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF
If caterpillars emerged from their cocoons as butterflies with heavy, sagging testicles I’d imagine they’d feel the same as you might right now.
-
Same-sex marriage challenges freedom
We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought.
It comes as little surprise that this quote comes from the mouth of a catholic clergyman. I think he should be more worried about sorting out his own house, than doling out such pearls of wisdom.
-
You can be a football supporter and not be an idiot
In this wonderful piece Brian Phillips claims he is here to save your life. While that may be a stretch, he does speak bucket-loads of sense.
The modern football fan accepts their teams faults (in some cases they celebrate them), but reacts with “furious anger” to any slight from an opposing team (the depth of this anger grows exponentially when it’s their local rivals).
The problem is (and again, I’m not the first person to notice this) that for a lot of people, that rage-tap is getting harder and harder to shut off. Anger is increasingly becoming a default element in how people interact with the games they follow
We’ve probably all experienced this at some stage, whether we are the angry party, or merely in the same county as one. A knee-high foul goes unpunished — the referee is biased; a marginal offside call — the assistant is biased; a blatant dive wins a penalty — the perpetrator is more evil than unicorn hunters.
Rather than accepting these calls as part of the game, supporters go in search of evidence to support their beliefs that their team is being targeted. Soon, they are in conspiracy theory mode, a slip is dive, inches are miles, and two or three players becomes the entire team.
…soccer has devolved into a realm a little like politics, a realm where fans’ access to preconceived explanations that suit their emotional allegiances is drowning reality out of the discourse.
Rather than trying to apply any common sense, they react sub-consciously, fueled by the ever greedy media-machine, and leap to join their army of equally deluded peers.
The problem is that by doing so, you condemn yourself to a life of always being at least a little angry about a thing you supposedly love, a life of storing up slights and spinning them into bitter little stories, a life of basically hostile, suspicious, and un-fun commitment to a thing that only exists to give you joy.
Ask yourself, does football make you happy or angry? If it’s angry, maybe it’s you that needs to change and not the game.
-
Cheating in Football
The furore amongst the English media and supporters of English football teams (and Real Madrid) over Barcelona cheating amazes me. Cheating is part of the game. English players cheat. Players for the club you support cheat.
This piece by Andi Thomas covers the hypocrisy of the English media’s approach.
What’s interesting, however, is the persistent and constant elision of English deception from the English media’s presentation of the English game. While the amount of moralising that followed the clásico was due in no small part to the waves of hype that had preceded it, there nevertheless remains a stubborn refusal to admit that this might be something that is a problem with all football, not just other football. This attitude finds its nadir with Steven Gerrard (yes, alright, him again. But does any player so neatly encapsulate English football? None that I can think of), who once told the Daily Mail, apparently with a straight face, “I don’t think there’s anything worse than a player diving when no-one’s been anywhere near him. It does ruin the game”.
