It's All About The Craic

Happy new year one and all. I have been slack in the email updates. At this rate I will get one more email out before my tenure here finishes in April. I have been working at Microsoft for the last month and it is good craic, as they say here. As you would expect, it is a very professional operation. When you start you do a half day safety induction class, where you learn important things like what to do if you spill hot coffee on a fellow worker (cold water, not butter, incase you have a stash of butter at your desk and you want to smear your colleagues).

My last email about peat seemed to create a great deal of confusion. I was racing against the internet cafe clock and in my haste I forgot to mention that I was paying homage to one of the great Seinfeld episodes, "The Limo", where Jerry and George get O'Briens Limo from the airport. I used valuable company work time this week surfing the web for a sound bite of Seinfeld lauding the goodness of peat, but to no avail. So, I got many replies regarding this topic. Here are some anonymous samples...

"Who's Peat"

"I love the smell of peat on the morning"

"My favourite Dublin smell is the hops from the Guiness factory wafting down the Liffey River"

"You're mad" (To quote Salvador Dali in my defence - "The difference between me and a madman is that I'm not a madman" (thanks for that one Kevin))

One email was in praise for "...appreciating both the purfume of peat in Dublin and the arboreal aerie of St. Caoimhin"

"James, stay off the drugs" (As most of you know, I don't do drugs - Life is my high, Man)

Speaking of smells, I was in London recently (no it doesn't smell) and while I was there the Home Office issued a terrorism warning. We were told to be vigilant(?), and to be vary of gas attacks, which we are told smells like bitter almonds. I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't have a clue what bitter almonds smell like. I don't even know what sweet smelling almonds smell like. The only time I eat almonds is when they are entombed in a block of chocolate or smothercated in salt in a party mix. Bitter Almonds? That's so abstract. They may as well have said "essence of dwarf". And if they are telling us this then where are our complimentary gas masks upon entry to the Kingdom?

If you do the Dublin - London trip by bus/train and ferry, the chances are that you will sail the Irish Sea on the Ulysses - the worlds largest car ferry, so the Irish Ferries promotional blurb tells us. There are twelve themed areas in the ship commemorating the 12 different hours of the book. Ulysses has a fierce reputation for being unreadable, yet it consistently tops top 100 books of the 20th century lists that various bookshops and publishers feel compelled to compile..(Random House).

In Dublin there are plaques on the street and on buildings where scenes in Ulysses takes place, and on the 16th of June they have Bloomsday, where naff bastards dress up in Edwardian gear and go around the streets re-enacting parts of the book.

Having now a good working knowledge of the streets of Dublin and its surrounds and hearing that they are making it into a movie as I write, I felt it was time to give it a try. What can I say. I got through the first 40 pages of this 700 odd page babbling tome before retiring. I haven't given up yet though. As the old Gaelic Irish saying goes, "Is fearr rith maith ná drochsheasamh", or "He who runs away, lives to fight another day". Well that's what it says on the sugar packets. Joycey! Oh fellow James of the Second of February James. Where's the craic I ask you.

I mentioned madmen before, which brings me next to a fellow part-time Victorian, Mel Gibson. I saw Braveheart for the first time the other day. I took my time in seeing it, but what a film. A real stand on your chair with your fist in the air film.

Mel has recently had the charge of madman levelled at him for his latest project. He is currently in Rome directing a movie about Christ's last 12 hours, spoken entirely in two ancient tongues - Latin and Aramaic. To top it off, their will be no subtitles - hence the madness charge. I think that is so cool what he is doing. The luxury of having money and Oscars.

When he made Braveheart he didn't have the directorial clout he has now so he would have had to pander to the producers guidelines. If he was making the movie today I'm sure the three main anomalies of the film would be absent.

Anomaly 1: They are all clean.
Anomaly 2: They are all intelligible
Anomaly 3: None of the Scottish women swear.

JTC