Moving on for more money

I'm not doing this anymore, I'm doing www.bblanks. blogspot.com

Nightboat to Cairo

Seven days. Six Egyptians. 10 tonne of prawn. One skipper from Donegal. No shower. One fridge full of bacon. Two hours sleep a day. A grand adventure on the 80ft rust heap that is the trawler Argo K.






I can't decide which was worse the claustrophobia of living in a tiny box with eight other men for all that time, the smell of fish guts everywhere in spite of the presence of air fresheners in every corner, or the fact that everything you touched felt like chip shop curtains.

Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and getting our first introduction to Nuts and Zoo and Egyptian porn, myself and Steve Ryan went working on the trawler. He has better photos than me on his site: http://steveryanphotography.wordpress.com/ Steady-handed bastard.

We wanted to write an article sure, but also to see if we could cut it amongst real men. Mohammed, Hassan, Said and co. were real men. Tough bastards from Alexandria with a combined experience of about 100 years at sea. They showed us pictures of their girlfriends back in Drogheda and Tallaght. They were scarier than some of the fish we pulled in.

Every six hours an alarm rang around the boat and we dragged another tonne of fish in. Most of it got thrown over. Quotas don't allow the fishermen to catch certain fish, but certain fish have a wide-on for nets and can't help themselves. Dead haddock, dead cod and dead sole all had to be pitched over the sides.


Anyway, I'm going to post more on this later but for now I've got to grab another shower, and then one after that, and one after that...

Gone Fishing. Back on September 15

98almera: for sale, single and in suburbia

The worst thing about coming to the end of the road is that you have to make another decision and the decision you've got make now is much more than the usual motorway or secondary road, ham or cheese service station sandwich or go fast and chug petrol or go slow and sip.




We sped back through Northern Germany last week. Up until the last minute it was going to be Luxembourg. Then we had a fight and neither of us gave a shit about going to Luxembourg anymore and we ended up in Antwerp. Antwerp is as pretty as Christmas. It's home to chips, beer and waffles. I crashed the car into a low pole and pissed off spent the next two days getting drunk and fat. Summer was over in Belgium before they told Ireland. Already people were wearing scarves and hats. The next day we went to Brugges. For Colin and Brendan's sake. We had a puncture there and I had to put on the spare which was so worn down it felt like we were driving on a rim. It took a whole day to get along the north coast of France and then back across on the boat for the Electric Picnic Festival.

"That's the queerest fecking car ever," was the first thing we heard getting back into Ireland. It's nice to feel welcome. Coming through Roscrea some kid gave us the fingers. That's real love. After the festival we drove to Kildare and that's where 98almera's adventure stopped. That night Bridie caught a flight back to Australia and I got thinking of my next plan. It's a trawler. No one's put any spray paint on it. And it probably won't get me any props but after making a road trip to Berlin with the express intention of learning how to rave, it follows that the next thing I'd do would be to learn how to fish.




For the moment I'm broke so the car's for sale. It's some offer. You're not only buying a vehicle but a dream. Four wheels that only point towards freedom. Think about it. And I did say I'd accept favours as well as cash

The art of letting go

Up early in the morning. Sure the sheep and the ducks won't like it but they knew the dream would only last so long. Ireland's their home. And the sauerkraut would have eventually turned their stomachs to gloop. Better to feed them on Irish grass.

We've got to lighten the load. First we thought about the money, like anyone who's had to make it in Ireland does. We tried to sell our excess luggage. In Berlin you can buy a bike for a fiver. You can get drunk on coppers and you can pick up a suit in a charity shop in exchange for a handful of fresh spit. It wasn't easy. We had to be imaginative. We wrote a cute sign for the bicycle that worked and then a desperate sign for the keyboard that also worked. It's important to not hold on to too many things. Memories are heavy enough.

The Vatican is the smallest state in Europe. If you're an atheist, Luxembourg is. See you tomorrow Luxembourg. And goodbye Berlin.

Exclusive: The Burger King-Berghain conspiracy theory

In Berlin, they'll tell you, the trains stop at one thirty and then don't start again until about four thirty in the morning. And Berliners don't get taxis; tourists do, so on an average night in the city most people wait it out that extra few hours if they miss the one thirty train. But let me tell you this, it's all a lie. The trains run 24-hour it's just that the nightclub and fastfood union, also known as the 'Disco-Doner Alliance' block book all the carriages so you're forced to go clubbing or hang out at some fastfood joint. They've been doing it for years now, operating ghost train routes all over the city, pumping more and more cash into the ticket machines to keep the train doors firmly locked for those three hours. And if all this corruption smells like Donegal, let me tell you that it goes all the way up to Merkel. She's in on it too, and how could she not be knowing that Berlin's fragile to fucked economy is dependent almost entirely on nightclubs and takeaways. This is old school protectionism much like government advertisements encouraging people to eat more fruit and vegetables when scientists keep telling us that eating that shit can lead to myopia and dementia. It's clever and you've got to applaud that kind of people-control but you don't have to put up with it. Next time you get caught in the three-hour fog between late night and early morning have some fun with it. Go behind the counter and serve yourself. Order your food, on foot, through the drive-thru and ask the taxi drivers if you can drive around in their car for a while, but don't give into their games and don't play it their way. Berlin was built on resistance and by not resisting it'll fall. Fight to the bitter end of the night.

Je cerche le accommodation svp

We're off again. This weekend myself and Bridie and our four-wheeled wonder shall take to the highways of Europe once more. We're racing back for the Electric Picnic Festival in Ireland. The car has been requested to play some of its bigger hits. So en route we're going to go through Belgium, Luxembourg and Paris and maybe take in Nantes and somewhere else up there in the North West of France. Long shot I know, but if anyone's been following our adventures you'll remember that the last time we put up our tent was at a music festival called Melt. The one where it rained for three days solid. Remember it was so bad Bridie dumped me just for taking her there? Well I've been undumped but I'm scarred and don't think I can risk another tent fiasco. Long shot, but if anyone has a piece of floor, end of a bed, warm doorstep somewhere between Berlin and Cork, I promise we'll be the best guests you've ever set your eyes upon. The picture above is not indicative of our personalities in any way whatsoever.