On a more serious note………………LESBIANS were spotted at the pub this evening. I can’t have that. I am and intend to remain the only gay in the village. I hunted them out of it immediately. Good God, between vegetarians and lesbians what is the place coming to? And what if they get together? Vegetarian lesbians? Drinking in our pub? No. I absolutely cannot have it. We have standards. Admittedly, they are low standards. But they must, nevertheless, be upheld .

From Sarah Britten’s hilarious book, The Art of the South African Insult.

My first thought was that civil war had broken out while I was lounging about at the beach. A blockade. Fenor bog (which you can’t see because it’s on the other side of the bus)had been seized by rebels. I fully expected to find a group of eco warriors barricaded behind the bus. Instead I saw only a rather disconsolate bus driver wandering around the vehicle peering at the wheels. Have you noticed that’s what men do when they’ve had an accident? It doesn’t matter that the engine is sitting on the backseat, or the boot has been rammed onto the steering wheel. They still wander around, fiddling with their knickers, looking at the wheels.  Does anybody have a theory on this?

There certainly had been an occupation of sorts but only of the pub where a group of Yanks and Aussies awaited the arrival of another bus to take them to wherever they were going. In the meantime a bloke with a 4 times 4 came and towed away the clothing recycling bin (that’s the blue one stuck on the bus’ front bumper) after which the driver managed to extricate himself.

There are a number of theories about how he managed to park it there in the first place. As for me, I think it was a stroke of pure driving genius. I mean, you couldn’t do it if you tried, could you?

Me? Mind? Noooooooooooooo, of course not and would you like me to have a little snack and a cup of tea waiting when you haul your drunken arse out of the Bog pub at one o’clock in the morning? Why, in the name of God, would I mind having my house used as a left luggage depot, my sleep disturbed and my privacy invaded?

Better still why don’t you tell all your friends to bring their shopping too and I can open a supermarket?

Fuck’s sake.

Sometimes I swear I am living in a parallel reality.

Lashing rain at the minute (how unusual in Ireland) so I shall not be going to Annestown unless it clears and spend the day painting. I have almost finished two rooms, five to go and Richard is going to tile the bathroom and kitchen floors, hopefully next week. It really only remains for Harold to remove the pile of crap in the sitting room and I’ll be away on the proverbial hack. Should be moved in by mid June. Oh joy!

I am told by Sean that full citizenship of the Republic of Fenor may be a problem since there have never been South Africans in the village but he will do his best to pull a few strings. This is a source of great comfort to me. I might offer reciprocal citizenship of the Queendom of Higgledy Piggledy Farm.

view from the church carpark

graveyard

Fenor church

Cleaning and painting will commence tomorrow. Moving in will hopefully start mid June. A list of permitted visitors will be posted on the front door. All others can consider themselves barred. You know who you are. Applications to be unbarred can be obtained in the pub across the road and will be considered by me and two assessors in August.

The Darwin Awards 2010 Yes, it’s that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honouring the least evolved among us. Here is the glorious winner:

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

[*A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER]

10. When a man attempted to syphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spill ed sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline, but he plugged his syphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.

Still haven’t learned to touch type, mind you.

The supportive people in your life often make all the difference between success and failure.

They tell you that you can do it rather than telling you that you can’t. Yes, sometimes we do attempt things that are simply beyond our reach, but we can never succeed if we never try, and we never try if we’re constantly told that we can’t do it. A supportive person tells you that you can do it, not that you can’t.

They encourage you to stretch yourself beyond where you think you can go. A truly supportive person can be aggressive and pushing, like a great coach. They encourage you to step beyond what you think you can do and push yourself even further than that.

They point you upwards when things look down. They don’t abandon you when you fail. Instead, they stick by you and tell you that things will shape up.

They encourage the better aspects of who you are. Either by example or by advice, they encourage the more positive aspects of your talents and your personality. The more you use them, the more prevalent they become as a natural part of who you are and how you behave.

They make you feel good about who you are. No one is perfect and it’s easy to get caught up in the negatives, especially when the people around you regularly point them out. Instead, look for the people who point out the positives and make you feel better about the person you naturally are.

They don’t expect you to be someone else to please them. If people are truly supportive, you don’t have to put on an act just to please them. You can be yourself and your natural positives simply come to the forefront.

You need to seek out the supportive people in your life and work on those relationships. Make an effort to spend more time around the people that make you feel good about yourself and what you’re doing and give you a sense that you can do it, whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

If you’re trying to adopt new habits, seek out people who already have those habits ingrained in their life and will help you with theirs. If they are truly supportive, they won’t care that you make mistakes (aside from merely wanting to help you past them). That type of attitude from the people around you makes everything possible.

Minimize the Unsupportive People.

On the flip side of the coin is the unsupportive people. They’re the people in your life who you have to put on an act for. They’re the people who make you feel less happy about who you are and what you’re capable of. They’re the people who encourage your worst traits.

One of the most powerful moves you can make is to minimize the presence of such negative people in your life. For some people, this may mean moving away from a lot of the relationships in their life or away from relationships that they view as being deeply important.

Unless you’re personally responsible for that person (you’re a parent or a guardian), there is no relationship you shouldn’t back away from if that relationship is introducing negativity into your life.

Seek out a new set of activities. Break your routine. Instead of going out with the same set of negative people, go to a community activity. Call up an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Try something completely new.

You don’t have to define yourself by the negative people around you. There’s a world full of people out there and quite a lot of them are positive, well-meaning people. Spend your energy seeking them out and building relationships with them and leave the negative people in the dust.

Be Supportive
Yes, it’s powerful to seek out supportive people and reduce your connection with unsupportive people, but you can have a profound influence on the supportiveness of those around you by simply being supportive of others.

Avoid negativity towards others. It’s easy sometimes to just say something negative towards someone who has made some form of a mistake, but such negative comments have both a negative effect on the person you say it to (often more than you realize) as well as a negative effect on you, reinforcing your own behavior as a negative person and an impression that bystanders gain of you as a negative person.

Look for something positive to say. On the other hand, saying something positive about someone else (or doing something positive with your time) has the opposite effect. It lifts the person you reach out to and also lifts (in a subtler way) the bystanders.

The positivity and negativity you give out comes back to you. If you’re negative, the people around you see you as being negative. You bring out negative behavior in others and you mutually bring each other down.

On the other hand, if you’re positve, the people around you see you as being positive. It brings out their positive behavior and they strive to bring you up.

It seems so simple, but it’s often so hard. Be positive towards others and seek out positive people and you’ll suddenly find that the world lifts you up instead of holding you down.