The next day we checked out some local sights in Dublin

Local talent.  Check it out he’s playing the fiddle behind his back.  They were pretty good these guys.

I was hoping to see Van, and sure enough, I did. He was shitfaced.

Loads of local talent.  Sadly we didn’t get to see Mumblin’ Deaf Ro’s set but I think we’ll be hearing more from this up and comer in the future (esp. if he can stop mumbling –ed.).  I can’t really say I have the same amount of enthusiasm for young Michael Knight though.  Wasn’t that Hasselhoff’s name on Knight Rider?

Kh4n + Ruairi, Guiness.  What is Ruairi thinking about?

The sidewinders were super pleased about this. 

This guy had a huge package, it has to be said.  He doesn’t seem too happy about something.  I’d be fucking happy….

“Poundwise”…”To Let”….such crazy signs!

This is where Kh4n and Ruairi used to live.  The plaque there indicates that so did this Irish writer who went on to live in Japan and have success there years later.  But that’s really neither here nor there…

We went out the next night with Ruairi’s cousin Peter and Kh4n and Ruairi’s old friend Bruce and that guy’s brother too.  Ireland:  land of brothers.  I guess they were still barebacking until like a week ago up there, due to the Pope or something.  Lots of brothers and sisters everywhere.

Here’s a brother.

It’s the brother of Bruce.  Bruce is on the right.  Bruce was great.  He was very into all the jungle and breakcore stuff we were into, and also had just completed a masters degree in genetics on the South American Rainforest trees known as Monkey Puzzles.  Everyone spoke of monkey puzzles to Bruce.  He showed up at the Fords’ house and within minutes Catherine was heard in the kitchen going “sss wsss wsss monkey puzzles” to somebody.   I had to go through the same damn thing with time stretching in my day.

A friend I met at the bar that night.  He seemed like he was rich so I was nice to him.

Another yin.  He got me to tie the balloon string to a loop on the back of his shirt.  Then we became friends for life.

This particular night ended with typical behaviour on my part.  Sneaking into a residential “alley” beside a house to have a slash.  I also apparently sleep-wandered into the bedroom where Ruairi’s cousin Peter and his girlfriend were sleeping.  Terrible.  It’s the Markles’ curse I tell you.  I’ve done it many times…:-(

Did you know that in Ireland they just call Gaelic “Irish”?  They also have a crazy sport which they just call “football” which is like some cross between basketball and rugby.  You are on a huge field and you kick the ball but you can also pick it up and throw it.  You try to get the ball in the goal just like in fitba, but you can also kick it between two uprights like a field goal in NA-football (except you can do it from anywhere at any time).  If you get it in the net it’s 3 points and if you get a field goal (they call it something else), it’s 1 point.  But they don’t add up the score to one number, they keep the types of scoring separate in the scoring system – regular goals first then field goals second - , so typical scores are like “oh it was Dublin Belfast 2-3 to 1-6”.  Pop quiz – who won that game?  Ans:  wrong!  It’s a tie (9-9).  They call soccer “soccer”, which amazed me.  I thought only North Americans called it soccer.  So what the Brits call Football is Soccer to them, and what the Brits would I guess call Irish Football, is just “football”, you see?  You should have been there when we watched a “football” match with one of Ruairi’s uncles.  The guy was getting pretty emotionally involved.  It was Dublin vs. some other small town.  It’s all only Irish cities and towns that have the teams of course, and the players play for the team where they are from.  There would never be trading cos you would only ever want to play for your home team to begin with.  And they are all amateur meaning they don’t get paid, yet some of these guys are like the Irish David Beckham.  Amazing.  That’s how it was meant to be, in my opinion. 

This is the space needle or something, in Dublin.  It’s very sharp as you can see!  They say it’s self cleaning but I don’t see what they mean.  Just look at it; it’s pretty dirty.  And besides all that, it was raining.  Is that what they mean by self cleaning?  Then everything in the world is self cleaning.  It’s a double-edged sword, really…..

The base of the filthy thing.

The canal in Dublin.

Council flats with some wee ‘uns mucking about.

This is where the whiskey comes from, they told me…

I played a show with Duran Duran Duran and “The Teknoist” at this weird little bar called Ice Bar.  It doubled as a Chinese restaurant, or so it seemed.  There I am…making the magic

I had a couple songs left but Mr. The Teknoist came up and stood there until I was done.  It’s kind of annoying but not really.  He was a cool guy.

He played a nice set off Ableton of some of his tunes and some other people’s stuff.  A pretty nice gabber DJ set basically.  It was rockin’.  I was shooting the shit with DDD and then I heard the ominous opening part of “The Tide” by Noisia come seeping into the mix.  I got excited; that has to be the best dnb track I’ve heard in the last year or two.  Then just when the beat was about to drop he mixed it straight in to some other gabber track.  I was kind of bummed but also impressed by the suspense he had just created, while fucking around drunk on the laptop -and by that I don’t mean he was a hack – he had shit together back there.  But yeah that’s what it’s all about!  Take them to the cliff but don’t make them fall off the edge.  I’m paraphrasing Hitchcock there…..

Me and DDD aka Ed Flis.  What is that, Norwegian?  Look at how curly my hair is!  Ugh.   

You can’t see it that well but there was some “sick” all over the toilet seat.  The Ice Bar: what a shithole. 

It was good though.  Teknoist and DDD’s sets were awesome…pretty much all 4/4 gabber which the small crowd assembled was totally into.  There was a guy doing live visuals which had full-on hardcore porn as part of it, which is suitable for DDD – he has such song titles as “Hard Girls”, “Manrammer”, “Hard Leather” etc. and the list goes on.  Respect to fellow breakcore pervs.

Speaking of which. 

This was after, outside of the next club, “Spirit”.  I took one that had their faces in it and they made me erase it.  Spirit, by the way, is one of those 4 level mega clubs with tons of shitheads lining up outside and tons of shitty hiphop playing inside.  Irish Ginos a) exist, and b) go to this place.  We had a show in the basement level, which was cooler than the other levels, naturally. 

Kh4n was playing when I got there.

Ruairi played soon thereafter.

This guy was outside when I went to smoke.  I liked this guy but we didn’t talk or anything.  He reminds me of a young Mr. Spika from “The Cook, The Thief…”.  It’s a good look. 

I played after Kh4n. 

That night ended with me, Kh4n and Bruce looking for this elusive after-party where DDD and them were gonna be, possibly playing  Unfortch, Ruairi, Peter, and his gf all spent way too long trying to lug Ruairi’s drums back to the Fords’ house.  Like, an hour trying to get a cab just to pick them up.  I’m sorry you guys had to go through that. 

 We found another party instead and I busted out the laptop and played a third set that night.  It was bad though because it was through a small little sound system in somebody’s kitchen and we didn’t know anyone and it sounded all shitty.  This says it all really:

Some girl went “what are we gonna do about the music?!” and I turned and was like “I know…it sounds shitty. I’m trying to fix it etc…” and she almost died of embarrassment, thinking she had just insulted me and everything I stood for.  She didn’t know I was standing right there.  But it did sound like shit.  Lady, you were right.  I wasn’t offended.

We then found this other party right nearby that was supposedly the right one.  Bruce had had to swap cell phone cards with Peter earlier due to some zoning issue, while he tried to call somebody the knew where we were going.  The fucking lengths, eh?  But that party didn’t feature Ed DDD or the Teknoist and instead it was all full of displaced Spaniards who were bitching to us about why they didn’t like Dublin (yet they were there, for some reason).  Enough was enough, and we went back the The Fords’.

To my knowledge, I didn’t creep into anybody’s room that night.  I did wake up next to two dismembered prostitutes, but that’s neither here nor there.  That’s a typical Dublin thing to happen, or so I’m told.

Here is Mrs. Catherine Ford – the barrister – and Sinead, a girl studying law who lives with them and may be related to them.  Before we left I went and bought a bottle of Canadian Club rye whiskey to give them as a present for having us and feeding us.  I also might have felt a bit bad about my creepy nocturnal exploits.  Might have…..

This is Raon Rothar.

Just an old kickin’ guy at the bus depot.

Yes so on this next day we took the bus into Northern Ireland to go to this big outdoor festival that we were playing at.  It was beyond Belfast.  A two-hour or so ride.  The countryside was gorgeous.

This was pretty sweet:  the bus slowed down and eventually stopped completely.  We looked up ahead to see why, and it was because a herd of sheep were coming down the highway.  A slightly apologetic sheppard dude walking with them had his hands out all like “what are ye gonna do?  It’s sheep.” 

Ruins.  We just don’t get to see this sort of thing in Canada.  Nothing here is ruined yet, unfuckingfortunately.  There are plenty of things that should be. 

So we got to the festival grounds, eventch.  This was after taking another smaller bus from the closest town after getting off the first one.  On that wee shuttle we met this other dude that was coming to DJ.  His DJ name was “Chump”.  LOLs.  Bruce and them had procured this fucking disgusting wine made by local monks called Buckfast.  It contains caffeine, as well as alcohol, for some reason.  It is the official drink of sketchy Irish ravers everywhere, apparently.  I didn’t like it but we were swigging it on the shuttle for good measure.

Might as well set up the tents.

A windblown Kh4nstantine Catsiris. 

I too, got in on some wind action.  “Ahh!”

We were tripping out over the clouds.  I mean honestly.

No party is really a party w/o the Party King auto-coiling UK-style extension cord.

We went around checking out the other stages once the tents were up. We made sure to be careful around this one.  Like, SARS masks and everything.

So this is me playing, much later.  I’m wearing Thomas’ sweater because it was freezing.  It was a pretty rough night in the tent that night btw.  I had a towel as blanket but that was it.  Kh4n was trying to use it but I shut him down.  But yeah, this was a good moment.  The sound system was awesome.  People were fucking into it.  People were coming up and shaking my hand mid-set, and others were taking pics.  That guy Bruce was a great guy to have in the crowd cos he kept egging me on to “play harder”, screaming that at me as I cued up tracks in Ableton.  I’d have him at all my shows as a sort of mascot/life coach, if it were feasible.

Bruce took objection to this ludicrous thing of Ludacriss, and let us all know how he felt about it.  It was a giant mural poster for “The Fast and the Furious II”.  Why was it there?

Sharon wasn’t with us on the trip or anything, but then how can you explain this?

Look at Bruce, “givin’ ‘er loads”.  See what I mean?  Also there was a midget present.  On the flyer it said there would be a “genuine leprechaun”.  It mentioned nothing about Yoda. 

Sunset at Tetris Safari.  Did I mention that that was the name of this festival?  It was a Psy-Trance festival.  That’s what they call Psychedelic Trance music.  It is the domain of hippy ravers.  I do not like that music in general….there is of course some very good psy-trance and a lot of it is especially well produced.  But in general it’s that shitty “rave” music that you’ve heard and don’t like.  A lot of reliance on cheesy almost new-age synth arpeggios and 4/4 beats, and acid buildups, and totally predictable drops.  But hey, I guess that is what those drugged out people want when they’re losing their shit to this stuff.  And believe me they are legion.  And they lose their shit to this stuff, often on psychoactive drug cocktails that would make Tim Leary be like “whoa now let’s not go nuts!”

Back to before the show, where we chilled by the tent for a good 2-3 hours drinking cans and listening to old jungle tapes on Bruce’s ghetto blaster.  It was awesome.

More gorgeous sunsets. 

It says “Blakkar Noir” at the very bottom.  I’m famous! 

Here we will see some of the Psy-Trance decorations that those types are famous for.  Lots of fluorescent things, fractal patterns, trippy lights.  Anything to enhance your LSD + MDMA trip and make you forget about how brutal the music is.

This is Ruairi’s aforementioned cousin Peter.  Aka: DJ Combover.  Pictured here in the “Bouncy Castle”, which attraction was also listed on the flyer under added attractions, just before “Genuine Leprechaun”.  We got in and flung ourselves around and it was pretty good, but the thing kept toppling over.  Somebody had gone in with a cigarette and burnt a hole in it, innit.  Typical.

May I take your picture, miss?  What’s that?  No, I was looking at your, um, badge … the cross thing.  Is that felt?  … It is now.  (brutal – ed.)

This is Ruairi playing at our tent.  The bald chap is Paul, aka Iso9, who runs an Irish net-label and that is how Kh4n got in touch with him in the first place, mainly why we were there.  He offered to release some of my stuff, which we’ll see about.  He was a great guy.  Basically what happened was, about 45 minutes into my set (the last set on our stage) this big blonde dreaded hippy came up to me and said that some dudes were gonna be taking over soon and playing some chill music.  I said I was playing until 2 and he said no these guys were coming on at 1:30.  I was trying to do my mix or whatever and I sort of dismissively nudged him away and said “I can’t talk to you right now”  so I could do my thing and then he got in my face and said “no you WILL listen to me”…bad vibes, basically.  And this is in front of everyone who was checking out my set and dancing etc.  It was proper gay!

More of me looking awesome:

But the big tall dreads guy left and didn’t come back so I kept playing.  Then eventually this other nobody came up to me saying that the cops were there at the gates, and all the stages had to turn off the music for a bit, until the police left.  It seemed fishy, and the guy was trying to get me to talk into a cell phone where somebody would corroborate his stupid story.  How bogus.  Him and his buddy plotting out how to do their plan:  “ok you go, talk to the guy, then when he doubts you, have him talk to me over your mobile”.  Like hearing it off a cell phone makes it more credible.  This guy was less friendly than the dreaded guy … he was pretty ratty in fact.  Eventually he talked to bald Paul and convinced him that it was indeed true and that we had to shut down the stage.  So lame.  I hit stop on the laptop.  True enough, I couldn’t hear the distant thump from the far off trance stage.  I still don’t know if it was true or bogus but it seemed like things sort of got really quiet there for about half an hour.  We were in the “chill village” area of the fucking place after all, and the dreads guy seemed like he was the closest thing to a mayor in said village, and he wanted to keep it chill.  Fair enough.  He was sort of the Seth Bullock of the chill village you might say.  And I had been playing an (awesome) set of the harder areas of my repertoire.  It’s basically all Bruce’s fault, what happened.  I went to where blond dreads was hanging out with his filthy friends.  I busted in through their stupid blanket/door on their big tent where they were probably selling Patagonia pants and immediately he looked up, and so did his mate, as well as the girl that was there whom he fucks or whatever and they all immediately looked up at me and were like, in unison “this is a private area!”  I ignored them and asked the blonde dreads guy if he was the dude that had come up to me while I was playing, then introduced myself and apologized for pushing him earlier and he apologized for trying to make me stop but said “it’s just, you know, we wanted this to be a chill area”.  End of story. 

Except it really wasn’t the end – one of the girls that had been in our tent while we played made us the following offer:  She and her boyfriend had been selling curry meals out of a tiny 6’ x 6’ tent not far from the chill village stage.  She said they had a “wee li’l two-hundred watt-er”, with a “wee little sub”.  It was computer speakers but it was surprisingly decent.  We could plug our shit into it.  So we went to the “Curry Stage” and I plugged my laptop back in and me and Paul Iso9 proceeded to keep rocking it until the sun rose.  It was amazing.  He actually had this wee little Sony mp3 player that he usb-‘d into my laptop, giving him access to hundreds of other mp3s to play off my Traktor software.  We played the very best of jungle, breakcore and IDM (ed rush, photek, into AFX, then a little Squarepusher for good measure, into a half hour set of just Venetian Snares (mostly shitfuckers and Doll, Doll, Doll), etc. etc. repeat ad noiseam, Datach’I, Bogdan etc) until the wee hours.  It was classic.  Me and Paul teg-teamed thought out the night but at one point I was playing, and I clearly remember seeing Brucey talking to Paul and grilling on basic shit like “OK OK…look mate.  Do you like drum and bass?!” And Paul was all like “yes, as I’ve already said!”  Just ridiculousness.

The curry tent:

All, the reveling!  The hoodies of it all!  The many many cans.  As mentioned previously, we froze our asses off in the tent that night.  The next morning me and kh4n struck out, into the “staff” tent area, in hopes of finding somebody that knew anything about us getting paid.  They were supposed to pay us 150 pounds sterling, a fair chunk of change.  But we had no idea who to talk to.  All we had was some guy’s first name and a vague physical description of him.  It looked grim.  We asked a few people.  Then we found a tent that had catering – where we all could have actually eaten for free the day before and that morning.  There was bacon and all sorts of other shit…coffee and bread.  There were actually chicken wings.  I picked up a wing and then put it back down in the aluminum foil tray where dozens of other wings were sitting there, cold.  It was too early for such things.

There was no way we were leaving without paid, I was thinking.  After getting booted off the night before at the height of my set, I would have fought with some guy in the mud for our money at this point, if necessary.  We found this double-decker bus that had some people with walkie-talkies in it.  The kid who let us into the festival when we arrived in the shuttle bus the day before was there.  He had stopped the shuttle bus at the entrance point when we arrived and asked everybody for their tickets.  A few of the other people in the shuttle had actual tickets, and some others paid cash right then and there.  We told the kid with the walkie that we were playing at the festival.  He got on a cell and talked to somebody and then asked us for our DJ names.  Me, Kh4n, and Ruairi were all legit but we also had Bruce, Peter, and Tommy Matthews with us.  I joked (quietly, to the crew only) that they could use some of my other aliases since I was only using “Blakkar Noir”.  There had been a tense moment or two, there in the shuttle, as this kid said “Rory Lazers” into the cell phone, and it looked like he was gonna authenticate us all one-by-one while somebody with a list on the other end of the phone verified that shit.  It was 40 quid to get in.  Also we had quite a bit of booze with us, which wasn’t technically allowed.  A moment or two after he said Ruairi’s name into the cell he sort of gave up on the whole thing and let us all just go straight in.  We all exhaled.  We had just gotten away with not paying 120 pounds to get into fucking Tetris Safari.

So but now here we were asking the same dude for his assistance in us getting our 150 quid.  He led us to a large tent which another disheveled hippy eventually emerged from.  He wasn’t the guy we were looking for but he was on the team of organizers and knew our guy, etc.  When he asked how much we wanted and we told him 150, he seemed relieved, like “oh, that’s no problem at all”.  Me and Kh4n followed him to his car where he proceeded to get a large wrinkled envelope out of the glove, reached in, and counted out 160 pounds in twenties.  We could have probably said fucking 500!  He never once asked for any kind of proof of who we were or even our stage names.  All we told him was that we had played the night before.  Nice. 

160 Lbs. the richer, we went back and met the dudes and after a couple more hours of waiting, dying inside emotionally, looking at the sky, and being hungover (Bruce was especially hungover and bitching about it, the pussy) the same shuttle from the day before rolled up and we loaded our stuff in and got the hell outta there.  While we were waiting for said shuttle there was this couple there also waiting for the bus with us.  This is at the entrance gate of the festival, and there were a couple 45 year olds with security jackets ie the hired guards of the whole thing, regulating shit.  They were nice to us and I sure wouldn’t have fucked with them.  The girl out of the couple that was waiting with us was kind of being sick while she sat there on the ground, the guy sort of half-heartedly holding her while she occasionally spit up some watery puke, like an infant.  It was lame.  This flamboyant cyber-hippy who turned out to be Dutch, but was also part of the organizing party of the rave, came along to be sort of helpful to us waiters and make sure some kind of transport was arranged.  The thing was pretty well organized I have to say.  The guy was pretty nice, but wacky, and he helped and made sure shit was sorted, but was sort of being too flamboyant and trippy and eventually demurred that he was on tons of acid.  Which totally explained everything but then the girl out of the couple eventually lifts her head up from in between her knees where she was wretching and goes to him “how much acid are you on?”.  What kind of question is that, at that point?  What is this grade nine and you’re writing in your agenda on Monday how many beers and how many smokes you consumed that weekend?  Weak! 

I don’t really know what was up with Tetris Safari.  It said on the flyer that the whole thing was some kind of benefit for …breast cancer or something.  But there was kind of nobody there.  There were a couple hundred tents, sure.  There were a few hundred people there.  But somebody had put tens of thousands of pounds into the whole venture.  It was out of town, near a mountain and also on the water – you could even go to the beach and swim.  It was a little too cold for that alas, but the place was fucking gorgeous, and also huge.  They should have had a few thousand people there.  Somebody lost tens of thousands on that rave.  But it was a charity in the first place?  You can’t exactly go to the breast cancer place and be like “oi we were doing a rave for youse and we were gonna give all the profits to youse but instead we lost 27 grand so give us it”. 

But in the end, who cares?

And with that we left Tetris Safari.

After that, we bussed it into Belfast, where we were promptly picked up by another Matthews relation.  We got driven to a sort of family reunion – and that is where we watched the Irish football match with one of the uncles.  There were many small children about too.  We got fed food.  We were fussed over, as is always the case when traveling youths and homebound oldsters meet.  Not complaining!  Please don’t get that idea.  But you know.  You’re sitting there and you take some stuff and put it on your plate and then it’s “Is that all you’re having??  What’s the matter with ya?”  Not even like that really.  Shit I’m just gonna stop right here with this negative tangent.  We had lovely food.  We met some oldsters.  Mind you we had all basically not slept at all due to the freezing climate and the incessant pounding techno of Tetris Safari all night in that freezing tent.  It was crazy in the tent because at like 6am we could hear loud-as-fuck gabber coming from a far off stage at the bloody Tetris Safari…yet I had been told to stop at like 1:45.  Fuckers.  So we were all zombies and the old people were noticing.  After we ate and watched the sports, a man drove some of us and a lady named Anne drove the rest of us, from Belfast to a small town in the north named Limavady.  We’re talking pretty dam close to the very top of the country.  It was about an hour drive and we all slept the entire time.  We got in – to Anne’s place – and she drove down an alley off the main street down to this big tall black iron gate with spikes on top, which the two sides thereof parted automatically and dramatically when her car approached it.  The backyard was a sort of small paved lot that connected the backs of various shops.  Anne aka “Sweet Anne” had run a candy shop years prior and was somewhat of a local celebrity.  She still ran a bunch of small local businesses.  Sweet Anne is a hip chick...

We (me, Kh4n, Ruairi and Thomas – Bruce and Peter had de-bussed with us in Belfast and taken another bus to go back to Dublin at that point) were all totally exhausted but it was only 9pm.  Another cousin of Ruairi’s lived next door to Anne, who is his aunt I believe.  His house was accessible via back door by the same lot we had driven into.  He was a cool kid, early twenties, I don’t remember his name but I can find out for you if you really want to know.  He and his older sister (or possibly cousin?  I’m losing the plot here, Matthewses-wise) named Sorcha were both intent on taking us out, to the corner pub, which conveniently enough was right next door to their house.  IE two doors down from where we were staying.  I believe the pub was called “The Corner Pub”.  I didn’t even want to go.  Sleep was needed.  But as soon as we got there and got a nice booth, and the Guinness touched my lips and basically three hours later we were all wasted but full of energy and decided to go on to the next bar.  Well, truth be told, a couple dudes just went to get a bite to eat and then crash, but Sorcha and her other cousin (who looked and talked exactly like Craig Fergusson, yet strangely didn’t know who he was) were still up for further “craic”, and of course I was, so we went to the next bar.  There, over pints of Heineken (Guinness takes too long to pour in these crowded pub-club type places and so nobody orders it) we kept the party going with lots of loud talk.  I met some of Ruairi’s younger cousin’s friends, one of whom was a writer, and we talked shit for a while.  He screamed a poem he had written that had won some award into my ear.  It sounded good. 

The pub/club was packed with partying Limavady denizens.  I made eye contact with some other random group of two girls and a guy while ordering more rounds and we started talking and instantly we were best friends.  They said they knew a place where there was going to be an after party.  The lights were on in the bar at this point.  Things were ending soon.  Sorcha was sort of my chaperone/hostess, and was being a very good one.  Which makes what I did next so painful to remember.  But basically I told her I was going with these other people to some party.  She said wait outside for her.  “And don’t leave until I come out there”.  We went outside and they sure weren’t letting anybody back in at this point, but they weren’t exactly kicking anyone out either.  Those like, 15-20 minutes after the lights are on (but they haven’t said last call yet) probably net the bar another few hundred in profits, everybody scrambling for drink.  Anyways, Sorcha wasn’t coming out and they wouldn’t let me back in to tell her that I was taking off with these strangers, so I just left.

The four of us (I only remember that one of the girl’s name was Sinead – yeah another one) got to this house.  It was a sort of an abandoned house.  I think some of their friends had lived there and recently moved out but they still had keys and nobody had moved in yet so they had pseudo-squat parties there after the bar sometimes.  There wasn’t much booze – only random bottles that some of the other people had brought with them.  There were about 10 people there at this point.  Some girls had these huge bottles of bright green drink.  It tasted like bubblegum.  It was fucking sick.  But it contained alcohol, so let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.  I got some of that shite down my neck……

People were spraffing and a couple of the girls present there were seriously jonesing for more booze.  One of them who was on her cell, trying to wrangle further drink, had actually been bartending at the first place we were at.  I always have my finger on the pulse of the community.  She was yelling into the phone to guys she knew that worked in a different bar – a fucking town away – and they were still there and could they possibly bring 5 bottles of wine to the party?  It was all very desperate.  But hey – I too wanted more drink.  No dice though.  Then she was talking to yet another person, closing up at another bar, and trying to get them to bring stuff.  At these pubs, from what I gather, there is a sort of metal fence that comes down over the booze area behind the bar after the pub closes, and gets locked.  Like those little storefronts in NYC but on a smaller scale.  Did the dude she was talking to still have the key?  No, but “Brian” had it but he had left already.  She called Brian.  No dice.  She stayed on the horn.  I gave up and went exploring the house. 

The second floor had some bedrooms and a bathroom.  The third floor on the other hand, looked like the house at the end of Blair Witch.  It was creepy and decrepit and seemed to have like, dirt floors almost.  The floors creaked (even though they were dirt? - ed).  Little bloody handprints adorned the walls.  Not really, but it seemed like it.  I stood at the window of one of the rooms and looked at the damp stony street out front through the dew-dappled window pane.  Who knows what I was thinking at that point.  Finally I came down out that dark scene and there were a couple people waiting for the second floor bathroom and looked at me like I was crazy for coming down the stairs and seriously scolded me for being up there on the third floor.  That area was basically condemned and 100% unsafe and I could have fallen through the floors etc.  Nobody was to ever go up there.  Sorry, ok?  I didn’t know.

Another bunch of people were trying to get in to one of the bedrooms on floor #2 and there were a guy and girl in there going at it apparently.  One of the guys outside was mates with the brother of the girl that was getting fucked (I guess) in the bedroom.  They had the door barred in there from the inside – people could get it open about 6 inches or so but no further.  Some primitive barring system was in place in there to assure privacy.  Irish ingenuity.  But the guy was on his cell to the brother of the girl that was in there.  He was also a town over.  But that only means like a 15-20 minutes drive over there.  The guy on the phone sounded kind of pissed and urgent.  It was pretty fucked up.  I didn’t know what was going on.  A couple other people seemed kind of pissed too.  I decided to just leave. 

I walked out the backdoor into the misty night…..

I had no bearings of Limavady yet – still don’t – but I felt at this point that I could find the way back to Sweet Anne’s by myself.  My new friends had explained the directions to me earlier in broad strokes.  I walked about 5 minutes, turned a corner, and was there.  The backdoor would be unlocked, Anne had said earlier.  So I walked down that alleyway, and then:  the Iron Gate.  It was closed.  It was high.  It was pretty scary looking up top, too.  The spikes and so on.  Well, I tried a couple things, and the next thing I know I was at the top of the gate, my slippery (it was misting the whole time I was there, pretty much) sneakers vying for purchase on the slick iron bars of the thing, and I’m shuddering just thinking about it cos I could have smashed my head in on the pavement or caught my arm in the top spikes as I jumped down and ripped the thing off, but I jumped down and landed pretty solidly on the asphalt but my arm was up in the air and my green shirt-jacket that I always wear, was impaled on one of the spikes and it was ripped longitudinally down half the sleeve.  Jesus wept. 

I went for the backdoor and it was open.  Why do some people just have all the luck?  I was thanking my fucking heavens at this point.  I crept upstairs to the pristine white bedroom which I had to myself for the duration of my stay chez Sweet Anne.  Seriously, when she had shown us our rooms earlier, and here I was used to sleeping in the same room as all the other guys for the past week, and she led me into my sweet-ass, white room w/ huge bed on the third floor and when I realized that it was mine and mine alone, I was pretty damn impressed.  Sweet Anne’s place seemed like a kind of sweet-ass bed n’ breakfast with tons of made-up bedrooms which were all lush and fully equipped.  Kh4n had been there before and Ruairi lived there for a time, in years previous.  Kh4n was in the only other room on my floor, which was virtually identical, and we had a bathroom to ourselves up there.  It was lush.  So I got to the white room w/ tilted ceilings due to the roof and also some sweet little sky-lights in a sort of old-skool, stained glass but-all-clear vibe, flush into the slanted parts of said ceiling.  I fucking crashed.  It was 4:30 am.

The next morning I got up around 11:30 and others were still crashed out.  I was wide awake and felt fine, amazingly.  Thomas was down in the kitchen w/ Sweet Anne and we hung out for a bit and had coffee.  I stepped outside to get some fresh air and I saw Sorcha in her window across the lot.  On the lot....  She beckoned at me and looked all perplexed with her hands out.  She asked me the following question in pantomime:  how did you get in last night?  I mimed back across the lot that I had climbed the gate - bringing my legs up one at a time whilst holding onto some invisible bar with my hands, down below the waist.  She beckoned to come over.  I went over and she grilled me – not angrily but with concern – about what had happened.  She had waited for about 20 minutes outside the last bar we were at to see if I’d turn up.  I felt pretty bad about it but she was cool.  They had stayed up when they got home too.  Her and Craig Fergusson, that is.  I’m a great guest, what can I say?

That day the four boys and Anne went on a lovely car trip!  We saw such beautiful stuff!

This was a sort of marker on a trail that people walk.  People roam all over the place with thier feet and legs over there. 

Gortmore Picnic Area

This one is sick. I kind of wanted to just roll down the hill and let whatever happens, happen. All romantic-like.

We took a ferry across a little “bay” up in the top right hand corner of the island.  We were getting close to the very top.  Ironically, when you get to the other side of the bay, you’re back in normal Ireland, as opposed to Northern Ireland.  Republic of Ireland goes further north than Northern Ireland.  Could this kid be more IRISH???

T, Kh4n and me at Tyrella Beach. Photo: Ruairi Matthews.. 

The place had great rocks.  Sort of crystalline, but made of metamorphic rock…big jagged things jutting out of the ground (like crystals) but the shafts were made from twisted layers.  Neat.

These guys were chilling in a field across from a pub where we all had great lunches!  What was the name of that fish that none of us had ever tried?  Oh yeah - plaice.  None of us had ever had plaice before, Anne marvelled!   A commercially important flatfish occurring on the sandy bottoms of the European shelf.  It was nice.  It was like flounder or something.  That pub had bands too sometimes and although nobody played when we were there, I saw a poster for a show there soon starring “Irish Pink Floyd”.  That was the actual name of this tribute band.  I said they should be called Green Floyd instead and everybody agreed and then they carried me out of the pub on their shoulders while the whole place cheered.

MALIN HEAD

We drove a little while longer and soon we were at the parking area of Malin Head.  The northernmost tip of Ireland.  The end of the island.  It was all cliffs, crashing waves, sea foam, heavy winds, sheep droppings, and glory.  Majestic.  Have a look:

You know those rainbows that are like, “double rainbows”?

Look at that bit of rainbow down in the bottom corner.  A magical place.

Is this the new Boards of Canada album art?

This ladies and gents, is Sweet Anne. 

A little cave down there.  Tons of foam was flying through the air. 

There is a little church right near the tip.  The area was fairly devoid of other humans.  There were definitely sheep, or signs of sheep, all over the place.  I felt like I was at the very top of the map in Zelda.  A long way from the starting point!   Luckily there were none of those centaurs with magic swords.  Those guys were pretty tough, esp. the blue ones.

The very tip part of this area had by far the densest amount sheep shit droppings.  Kh4n went “hmm … pretty shitty up here” to many lols.

That’s it.

Here is Ruairi holding court on some topic at another local pub later that day.

That’s Sorcha next to me.  She wasn’t mad, she was cool. 

There were some pretty precious pics of all her and Ruairi's relatives in Sweet Anne’s house.

This is a crazy house that Ruairi wanted to see again.  This was the next day and we did a sort of smaller scale car trip to other northern-tip-area locales.  

More of these sort of crystalline boulder formations.  You know the cover of Houses of the Holy with the two little kids crawling over the flat hexagonal rock slabs?  That’s Giant’s Causeway, we were right near there but we didn’t go.  Those things are natural too.  There are lots of neat rocks!

What an asshole.

Some oldsters were crashed out at the place we stopped for cake and tea, god bless ‘em.

We checked out this cool castle!

OVEN

They have parties here some times apparently.  The whole front of this castle fell off into the ocean not too long ago, relatively speaking. 

There were fake skeletons to scare us.

Well, that was it for Ireland.  Kh4n had already left the night before to go to London.  After the castle we went to a fancy restaurant with some other aunts and uncles of Ruairi and Thomas’.  Seriously – Ireland is tiny, and there are just as many town as in Canada, it seems, and everybody is related and knows each other.  And they play sports for free…lesse….what other generalizations can I make?  They are all alcoholics.  The girls are slutty.  I loved the place. 

Sweet Anne rushed me to the small Airport in Derry, about 20 minutes from Limavady.  I waited for the airplane to show up with hordes of ugly people in sweatsuits with their screaming kids.  It was a bit rough.  The flight was another free for all cheap ass affair on Ryan Air.  This flight took me to London – Stanstead.  Back in that damn place.  I got off as quickly as possible and ran to the baggage claim, where I waited for my bag to come off the carousel but all these other people from the flight got there before a single bag appeared.  Everybody was crowded around the thing.  This older drunk British lady – like off of Ab-Fab but glammed down a few notches - was standing in front of me and she was being obnoxious.  A bag passed for the second time and she went “who wants this one?” to nobody in particular.  She saw some youngster standing nearby and started harassing him about how he looked like some singer.  I scoffed.  She heard me and turned her shitty attention towards me, saying that I looked like some other singer!  I was like “lady, please”.  I was trying to be all tough because I was tired and cranky and wanted to get out of there but I just came off sounding lame.  She looks right at me and goes “what astrological sign are you?”  I couldn’t believe it.  I said, all tough “you don’t believe in that shit do you?”  But I sounded like a brat.  I was losing my power.  I was on empty.  I really wanted to be home but that wouldn’t be for a while.  She looked right at me and then sort of checked out my hair and goes “what are you doing with all that hair??”  Fuck.  But then some alarm went off on the baggage carousel diverting the lady’s attention.  This other lady nearby looked at me and said “saved by the bell”.  Then my bag came along.  Jesus. 

I was so not out of the woods yet.  I had an hour shuttle ride to Heathrow, then about a 10 hour wait, over night, until my flight to Montreal.  None of this leg of the trip was photographed.  I hated it at Heathrow, where I found a bench and tried to sleep with my laptop strapped around me (in case I was gonna be burgled senseless overnight by a janitor or something) and my other bag as pillow.  I had searched around and found other pockets of sleeping people, none with anything I could sit or lie on.  Then I saw signs for a multi-denominational prayer room.  I thought maybe I could get in on some of that sweet action.  But it’s closed overnight for obvious reasons.  I found a quiet bench away from everyone else, all the various denominations.  I’m a loner; a rebel. 

Hours later I checked in and went to another area to wait for a few hundred more hours.  Somewhere in there I ate the blandest egg & ham on a bagel sandwitch which cost like 5 pounds.  God I can still taste the utter blandness.  Airports suck, and that’s the last place you hang out on your trip, which is a shame.  My trip was awesome but here I am remembering the very last bits of it and how gross everything was.  Let’s just say I eventually flew to Montreal and got off and took the bus to the metro and took the metro to my stop and I got out and my bike was locked outside the station just where I had left it two weeks prior.  I biked home with my bags swinging off me and I went up the stairs to my place and my place was un-robbed, which was all I could have asked for.  I went in and shut the door and locked it.