Try a country road with 8 pheasants. Never seen this many in a bunch before, also not sure why I thought beeping would hurry them up.

A very cool sight this morning none the less!

“De rattentaxi nemen” literally means “to take the rat taxi” and is Dutch slang for leaving a party without saying goodbye — essentially an “Irish goodbye.”

The phrase appears to have originated in Dutch student culture, with documented use in Groningen as early as 2013. Another Groningen student expression for the same disappearing act was “de Houdini plegen,” roughly meaning “pulling a Houdini.”

The idea itself is much older than either phrase. English speakers historically called it “French leave,” while the French expression filer à l’anglaise roughly means “to leave the English way.” In German, there’s polnischer Abgang, or “Polish departure.”

Apparently, Europeans have spent centuries blaming their neighbors for quietly slipping out of parties without saying goodbye.

Has anyone else seen this?

Not trying to rage bait or give it anymore attention than it deserves…

But the “food reviewer”(using that term lightly) influencer guy has a new series of videos on TikTok where he’ll ring up takeaways and try to order food in Irish.

Now, typically as most people in the country and especially in Dublin where he’s ordering from don’t speak fluent Irish, it ends up with the person on the other line not being able to take the order.

Given that a lot of Chinese, Indian and other takeaway restaurants are opened by immigrants, they of course also don’t speak Irish, which has meant that the comments are filled with dog whistles relating immigration and just flat out racism at times along with the “sad state of affairs in Ireland”.

The irony is, this lad also doesn’t speak Irish…I’m by no means fluent or even anywhere close to being able to speak Irish anymore to a high level, but even I can tell that his use of the language is full of grammatical mistakes and poor pronunciation. So I don’t know what the point of the videos are, given that he hasn’t fixed these mistakes even in the latest videos he’s published.

This is turning into a bit of a rant, so I’ll end it here. But do you guys have any thoughts on this? If it’s even worth thinking about.

Genuine attempt at making content to highlight how little Irish is spoken by the population of Ireland, or something more nefarious with the intention of grifting off right wing rhetoric surrounding immigrants?

Foil Arms and Hog; https://youtube.com/shorts/WGEuvtl5A4o

Since we bought the house (newly built) we had some solar panels on the roof which have a diverter to immersion. But some 4 years ago I got a proper solar setup, whole roof plastered in panels, and now immersion works all the time. It worked all the time (during day) with smaller initial solar, but now it’s really cooking. Even if the day is cloudy, as long as the clouds are not black, there’s enough light for immersion to run. I have hot water all the time.

But this also means that immersion has been running non-stop effectively for 6 years now. On the hot water cylinder there’s a sticker that says “Please service me every 12 months”, so I figured, might as well call some plumbers to do some maintenance of the cylinder, seeing that the heating element in it has been on for 6 years (during the day, of course).

I’ve Googled “Dublin Immersion Service” and sent an inquiry to the first 6 results. 

This communication has been an absolute disaster. Most of them said they will not even do a call-out unless something is broken. So even tho they have a fixed call-out fee which covers these “nothing to do” jobs, they won’t do it. They categorically refuse to take my money (150-200 euro, depending on the company) to come over, inspect the thing, and at worst (or best, depending how you look at it) they do nothing and get paid for it.

A company “Immersion Heater” said to me they don’t do immersion heater repairs. It’s in their name. 

Some of them got scared due to solar setup, with their reply being “we don’t do solar”, even tho my inquiry was purely about the immersion heater, and I’ve mentioned that electricity for it is provided through solar. But that should not matter for the actual cylinder and immersion, it should not care what is supplying the power. 

For some I had to explain how maintenance is an OK thing to do, and not just fixing broken things. I do yearly maintenance of my gas boiler, without it being broken first. They just didn’t get it. “We don’t do that” was their reply.

This has now been going on for around 3 months, and I think I finally got one of them, after extensive back and forth emailing, to actually come over and if nothing else collect the call-out fee of 170 EUR.

I have probably spent more than that amount of money in time wasted in explaining to them that I just need basic maintenance, that nothing is broken, and that every time I see my cylinder I see the damned sticker on it that says “Service me every 12 months”. So there’s obviously some considerations that things should be preventively maintained, rather than waiting for stuff to break.

Recently came across some old footage of the Dun Laoghaire Grand Prix, so I wanted to chart it out and share it here. It's a strange design

For a little explanation, Dun Laoghaire is a town south of Dublin, Ireland. It's mostly been absorbed into the city at this point, but in the 80's, for whatever reason, the town decided to hold a race. They had Formula 2000 and some historic car racing from the footage I found.

It's a 0.92 mile long circuit with 9 turns. From the footage, it appears the finish line was before the sweeping turn on Cumberland Street, but I was unable to confirm the start line.

Turn 2 through Turn 4 is perhaps the most bizarre set of turns I've ever seen, where it turns onto a small residential street, before turning back onto Longford Road (the long winding back straight).

Most of the action seemed to occur at the turnoff to Clarence Street (the hairpin at the top right of frame). Most of the footage focused on that corner, especially the RTE news coverage of the event.

From what I know, this event only happened for one year. But from what the layout looked like, it's not a surprise. Hope this little tidbit of racing history interests you all.

Footage found of the event: https://www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21219712-dun-laoghaire-motor-racing/
https://www.tiktok.com/@dunloghairevibes/video/7677240334765821186

Ffs lads. Why do people leave the place in such a state?