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odanny said:
Mowl, did you ever see this on Netflix?
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No, Danny - I don't have (or even really know) what Netflix is. I'm not a TV buff, but I do enjoy interesting documentaries, so I'll give that one a whizz later this evening. I may have seen some of the scenes in another documentary on DeLorean as they're kind of familiar. He was a massive coke head as I recall. Loved the high life, beautiful women, fast cars, five star hotels. Embezzled loads of coin from the investments coming in and was eventually rumbled.

Hell of a car though.

odanny said:
I never knew this shyster set up shop in your fair land.
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Neither did I.

Did he shift his operation with DeLorean up here or did he just emigrate?
 
Mowl said:
No, Danny - I don't have (or even really know) what Netflix is. I'm not a TV buff, but I do enjoy interesting documentaries, so I'll give that one a whizz later this evening. I may have seen some of the scenes in another documentary on DeLorean as they're kind of familiar. He was a massive coke head as I recall. Loved the high life, beautiful women, fast cars, five star hotels. Embezzled loads of coin from the investments coming in and was eventually rumbled.

Hell of a car though.



Neither did I.

Did he shift his operation with DeLorean up here or did he just emigrate?
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He built his cars in Northern Ireland, and got a kot of financial help. He was a complete shyster with a young, model wife who left him when the comany went belly up and he fleeced England of their investment. It is a pretty interesting story, though. He never expressed remorse and in his last years was still talking about starting the company again, when he was broke and dying.
 
odanny said:
He built his cars in Northern Ireland, and got a kot of financial help
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Nice story. Life is short, so I often find myself thinking that the 'bad guys' who go as far as he did into the high life based on supposed wealth when there was in fact none are kind of cool. I have an ex-manager from Dublin who borrowed loads of money based on a rock and roll laundry shop that gave him bank exposure so he borrowed everything he could and threw it all into pet projects. Including mine.

But long after I left Ireland, one lady I know was working for him in a pub he built at the lower end of Haddington Road, at Beggar's Bush. I lived in two cottages he bought on Cranmer Lane and he had work done to take out a few walls and add some doors which made it feel like one larger cottage. Any way, all of his projects nose-dived and the banks stepped in. But before they could nail he thought to himself:

'Fuck this going into debt after running a number of businesses and employing so many people' and he upped stumps and left Ireland to jaze only knows where he is now, but she had a surprise Skype call from him out of the blue: he was living in Chefchaouen up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, a town I stayed nine weeks in just a few years before.

He had white hair down to his hips and a white beard - this for a man whom everyone remarked how much like David Bowie he looked.

But I have to say - in these strange times, I find characters like DeLorean and my manager as risk-takers who know the only way out is to go on the run and never come back to Ireland. If it were me who was a few hundred thousand in the hole, I'd probably do the same. No family to tie me down, nothing worth staying in miserable old Ireland for either. Like a two fingers to the establishment. Fuck you and your bills, I'm off!

Anyone who came from the bottom and tried to reach the top - even on borrowed money (or especially on borrowed money) has a round of applause coming from my corner. Fair fucks to him. He got away clean too, and like me wasn't married or responsible for kids.

If I get the chance and he's still there, I'd love to fly over and hang out and hear the story from the horse's mouth.
 
The farming thread is interesting. You'd have to wonder how many animal and plant species Val has destroyed in the few decades since he's been farming?

It doesn't bear thinking about.
 
Word to Dana: if you have a problem with me, then talk to me about it, you cowardly streak of horse's piss. Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck your acne-covered mush, fuck your da and fuck your cats too. You're a two-faced little cunt I'd love to get my hands on and slap around like the mongrel mutt you are.

Your mother resembles a face that just went flying through the windscreen of a fast car that crashed into a garden wall.

She looks like someone put some Hallowe'en fireworks in her fat gob and lit the fuses.

Not even with a bag over her head - not even with yours, or even Jambo's.

I doubt you even know who your real da is - I doubt she does either - she has the look of a beer whore about her.

Try some zit cream on your entire being, acne-boy: you should blame your ma for giving you a midget's life. As if being a rancid-spotty bastard wasn't enough to contend with, you're a runt as well - four feet nothing of solid Irish shite.

David said:
The farming thread is interesting. You'd have to wonder how many animal and plant species Val has destroyed in the few decades since he's been farming?
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I'd be more concerned about his sexual relationships with those poor farm animals.

David said:
It doesn't bear thinking about.
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As a person - the same applies to Val.

He's 98% disgusting with another 2% of smelly.

Too tight to visit a dentist to fix his own gappy gums, so you can imagine the neglect those cows are suffering from.
 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
I'm sensing a little hostility.
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A mere storm in a tube full of zit cream - nothing that a little rest and a ham sandwich wouldn't cure.

odanny said:
Isn't that the Blue City?
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It is, and it's a wonderful little town that buzzes twenty-four hours a day and night with the Berber tribes arriving into the markets at night after the locals have had their day. The calls to prayer sounding regularly act like a clock, and you could see how they schedule their daily lives around it. Although I was given all sorts of warnings about how unsafe it is for white European people, I didn't so much as once have any problems with anyone there - and that even included the fact that my mode of dress was bare feet and a light cotton suit in a salmon colour. This going to restaurants each evening for dinner followed by a trip to the top of the mountain to have a few drinks in the hotel that served alcohol. They also had a swimming pool which as a great way to end the evenings.

I took a couple of days to myself and headed down the south face of the mountains into the desert. It was an amazing experience: the silence at night, the billions of stars in the clear sky, the Milky Way so easy to spot. It got very cold at night though and the little tent I brought was barely an improvement on things. But after two days I hooked up with a camel train heading back up the hill and took the route with the Taureg People heading to market. They gave me mint tea and a I shared a camel climbing the gentle slopes, rest of the time we walked the huge beasts. They have to carry so much weight, and my inner thighs were wrecked after a few hours from riding. Still a wonderful thing to do.

The north-facing Hotel Rif was our base, and the man who owned would greet me in the mornings and shake my hand, usually with a lump of sticky resin he'd pass to me so we didn't have to deal with the local kids and the brown dusty hash they try to sell you. I did buy some it from a couple of them, just to make sure they had a warm dinner, but the hash we'd just throw away, it's mostly muck and some sort of vegetable oil anyway. Met a few fellow Europeans, and towards the end of the trip finally came across a negative: two English girls came into town and we met them on the medina. They'd had everything stolen, had only the clothes on their backs, so we took care to make sure they ate and drank, then next morning head off on a bus to the city to get new papers. They weren't hurt in any way. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still sad though.

I'd love to go back again and see what it's like today, but I doubt if strutting around in a cotton suit and nothing else would be acceptable these days. Recently it's been rather more dangerous an area as the locals become stricter in their beliefs and less tolerant of western values. Those two Swedish girls who were decapitated represent the norm these days. Very foolish to go wandering in the mountains if it's two lone females. But I suppose a horror show like that one could happen anywhere these days.

Changing times and changing cultures.

Evolving into what though?
 
Nearly as bad as the hill-tribes of the Murphahideen. Out there on their shaggy ponies clutching rough cloaks of cured potato skins around them against the bitter winds of the Irish tundra.

Following the trail and waiting for the spring migration of the wild Irish spud as they thunder across the plain toward their breeding grounds in North Mayo.

The noble stag-potato framed against the skyline with a wide spread of antlers. Majestic.
 
A brief hello to whomever it is that keeps visiting two of my old groups on Facebook:

I see you're going through the photos/images most of the time. Here's a tip: that band hasn't performed together since 2016, and we have no current plans to perform again, unless it's something really worthwhile like Finlandia Talo.

As for the commercial art page?

It says quite clearly that I shut my Irish company down in 2013 - ten years ago - so you're wasting your time there too, I'm afraid.

You see, Facebook has these monitoring abilities that are given to page admins whenever we need to see the statistics and I have those pages flagged for any occurring activities. You're visiting those pages at least twice day for jaze only knows what reason. But know this: everything you see there is there because I put it there - and everything on both pages has already been pillaged and plundered by everyone on the Irish blogs because - and get this: I am not an anonymous person. You know my name, my location, my professions, and how to contact me. I am not afraid of you or any of your side-kicks. I've been a public person since 2009 - there's nothing new to discover about me personally from those sites. They aren't updated because they're not currently viable.

So have fun - you're hanging around in an ancient graveyard not even my ghosts haunt - you dumb cunt.
 
Nice video. That guy was doing pretty much what we were when we visited: getting lost most days but at the same time discovering new sites and new experiences. It takes a bit of getting used to but after a few days it gets easier - I used the sun to position myself and orientate back to the Hotel Rif.

The one thing that video doesn't show is the transition from daytime activities to evening and sunset.

When it gets dark, Chefchaouen takes on a different hustle and bustle. The markets are open well after midnight and the human traffic is heaving around the medinas. I never worried about getting mugged or robbed, but you do have to have some patience with the street dealers, many of whom have gang-loads of kids on their payroll trying to sell you everything from fake Marlboro's to mucky and weak hashish. I was told by Muhammud (the hotel owner) that the traditional saying: 'a man in a hurry is a dead man' ought to be heeded even when dealing with these kids. The meaning defines the need for you to be patient and civil to the kids, the hustlers, and even the very, very old people who try to pull you into their shops to sell you various things. Never tell them to fuck off or act impatiently with them - they're NOT alone - everyone nearby watched over them and if you treated them respectfully, you could avoid buying fake stuff off them. Yell at them and you'll find yourself surrounded by angry folks who'll make your stay that much more difficult.

I bought a bunch of clay pots, tea-pots, and urns for wine, all beautifully made by hand by this wizened old man but not fired on completion, so they were very fragile and I packed them and stored them in the car we drove down in from Dublin several weeks before. All through the journey back home I made sure they were safe from the bumps of the car and managed to get them home in one piece. They were stunningly beautiful in their simplicity, and the old man who made them signed the underside of each one. The evening I got home after being away from almost three months, my manager (who owned the cottage I lived in) had an impromptu welcome home party and some guestl had too much to drink and knocked the table over. They shattered into pieces and I was devastated. I tried to glue them back together but they were too broke to fix. That saddened me.

But it was a once in a lifetime type trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The drive down from Dublin to Holyhead, then Southhampton to northern France, a slow drive through the wine regions using the national camping sites (liberty, equality, fraternity; every man gets to eat (state part-funded baguettes, wine and cheeses) and he gets to have a holiday too (the camping sites are really cheap and have everything you need from stores to and laundry)) so we used them every night and drove from one town to the next using the national roads. After crossing over the Pyrenees at Pau, we headed directly south for Zaragosa and east to Barcelona and after a few days there, we hit the motorways and main roads along the coastal route to get to the south at speed, as neither of us were big fans of Spanish culture along the Costa del fuck-off British ale and Paddy-knacker pubs. The sailing across from Algeciras to Ceuta gave great views of The Rock Of Gibraltar.

Arrival at Ceuta and passport control was a long and difficult one to negotiate but we met this guy who said he could get us to the top of the line for a small fee. So he hopped in and got us through very quickly and we paid him a pittance for his services. The drive south to Chefchaouen was an eye-opener:the total contrast to Europe: the poverty, the dusty streets and falling apart roads, the kids running out from behind bushes with rocks of hash in hand to sell to us. We stopped for one kid and bought his lump of muck and later tossed it out the window. For good luck, as it were.

Although we based ourselves in Chefchaouen, we drove to Tetouan on the Mediterranean side and later west to Asilah, where we went to visit the famous city walls where Bono shot the video for 'Mysterious Ways' with U2. Tim, a bit of a U2 fan, hopped up onto the wall and did his best Bono for the camera: he was dressed in colourful golfing pants, big bubble-healed shoes, had multi-coloured fake dreads tied in to his mop of black curly hair, with an electric blue fur waistcoat. The natives likely thought he was some European rock star - like Bono and his mates. Tim didn't last too long in Morocco, so we got him back to Algeciras and on to Marbella where he had family who booked him a flight back home. He decided he wasn't safe in Morocco as people stared at him with his outrageous style of dress. They found it funny, not offensive. But he wasn't enjoying it and so he split.

So the remaining two of us had to adjust the budget for one less man in the car and the hotel rooms, etc.

As a duo we made a better team.

After eleven weeks away we finally arrived back in Dublin via Holyhead/Dun Laoire. We had no money at all left having spent it in Paris having a wild time with friends. But we were thirsty and decided to head into our local, which was Kehoe's on South Anne Street. The staff in there knew us and we told them we just arrived in from North Africa - and we've no money left. So he pulled us a pair of pints and we sank them whole. By then we had a crowd around us and they kept the drinks coming in return for tall tales. Then I met someone I knew and she came back to mine with me. I phoned ahead and my manager set up an impromptu party and it was a great homecoming.

Apart from the clay pots getting smashed.

Zsssssst.
 
Wow, I can imagine your grief after painstakingly getting those clay pots home undamaged, only to see them break in your own home. That sounded like a truly epic trip, I would love to spend time in the Pyrenees (I'm fairly certain the Tour de France was in Pau a little over a week ago) as well as the Alps (have to get to the top of the Alpe d'Huez before I die) as I find that country to be the most beautiful in the world, and obviously, this is a very much shared opinion. Unfortunately, I've only visited Paris before, but at least I was able to get inside the Notre Dame before it caught on fire. That was an unforgettable memory sitting inside of there, and I remember all the candles being used almost exclusively for lighting. I was surprised then it had not caught on fire before.

I think the one universal rule, that goes double when you stand out in a foreign land, is to treat people respectfully, you are a guest in their country and you should never forget that, even the lowliest street person has more of a claim to that country than you as a rich Westerner does, so respect their position, even if you do not respect them. I think of how many great empires crossed the Atlas mountains and would be in awe retracing those footsteps, and I do think a visit to the Blue City would be amazing. Since the video I posted is only a year or two old, I think I'd be safe, even as a solo traveler, like Gabe always is. (he is presently in Switzerland and posting videos from Zermatt, near the Matterhorn, and it is both outrageously beautiful and expensive)
 
So many things happened on the way and instead of keeping a diary, I wrote about the various events in letter form to send to my sister in London. She collected loads of stuff from my younger aged artworks to letters, sculptures and so on. When she'd head off on her travels, she'd give one of my sketches to the owner of the bar/restaurant/hotel and then make sure to get a photo of it hanging in place.

So with the various letters I sent her over all the years, she kept every single one of them. She said it was a great way to meet new people and show what Irish people can do. So the trip to Morocco was an epic letter of twenty six pages with added illustrations of the medinas and the folk hanging around. Droves and droves of people, all dressed in traditional costume and all trying to get us into the shop to buy their stuff.

She sent the original letter back to me and kept herself a photocopy of the entire eleven weeks on the road.

It's in Mam's attic, so it's safe; one day soon I'll have to go through all my correspondence from over the years of travels in music and art.

The guy I traveled with to Morocco sadly stabbed me in the back after a major problem which occurred in Ireland at a music festival we were both working on. It took me a while to actually figure out that it was he who set me up to take a fall to protect himself and his career in law. I got fucked over by the state - a total set-up that the coppers laughed at after the case was heard. They made a deal of some sort and he never had to appear in court. For me, that was the last straw - I HATED Ireland. The whole rotten set up from top to bottom, and I decided it was time to go, if I stayed I'd have likely gotten into even worse trouble for making sure I got the bastard and got him good.

Sadly, that opportunity hasn't yet arrived.

But it will.

I don't forgive and I never forget.

So he knows that eventually I'll be coming to see him. I know where his practice is based, where he lived and what he drives. I know his wife intimately as we were having an affair around the time the case came up. I was so angry about the court case I let her go. I had to, I was in a bad place and wanted no emotional or otherwise connections to prevent me from leaving.

I know everything about the cunt, he not only stabbed me in the back, but he stole from me too. A lovely Steinberg bass, with a beautiful extra-long handmade strap my Sis made for me. They're worth around €500/600 - but the money was the issue: it was a guitar I treasured as it was given to me by somebody very important in my life. What hurt the most was that knife in my back. A familiar sense of my country of birth: go ot alone - trust nobody, they're all out for Number One.

So I'll let him continue to sizzle for now.

He knows I'm coming.

I want my guitar back too.

 
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