Every morning, I am woken up by my alarm at 7am. I turn over, hit the snooze button and grab an extra 15 minutes of sleep. Once my 7.15 alarm goes off, I’m out of bed and into my dressing gown. I walk downstairs and prepare my morning juice. With my juice in my hand, I head back upstairs and on the way, I turn on the pump for the shower. I spend the next twenty minutes beautifying myself with a shower and a shave and a scuab of the old fiacla. Following this, I quickly get dressed and head to the dart station. This is when I start to get annoyed.

As I approach Glenageary dart station, I am confronted by two young foreigners – one male one female - but both with the same agenda. They both want to burden me with a copy of the daily rag that they are paid to hand out. Yes I’m talking about the Herald AM and the Metro “newspapers” – the scourge of the morning. Actually, the girl who hands out the Metro is fairly cute and I enjoy smiling at her every morning but my mood quickly changes to irritation when she forms a barrier to the entrance of the station with her Herald AM counterpart. The idea is that they make it difficult to enter the station without acquiring one of these rags however I pointedly refuse to accept one – even if the cute girl smiles at me. (more…)

I can’t believe it! I actually found my charger for my Sony Handycam I have not been able to use the thing for the past three months! The most annoying thing is that it was in a bag FULL of cables which I had previously checked at least 5 times… So if I looked harder those 5 times I would have had it ages ago! The funny thing is that I was actually looking for my headphone mixer and after about 5 minutes of looking for that I found the charger! Woohoo! Expect to see loads more rediculous footage and Gaffbhala malarky! Plus a music video for our latest Sonic theme song cover (this time Emerald Hill Zone). Check out the last one we did here!

So yeah, I was on my way up to band practice yesterday with Dan and it was a stonker of a day so we decided to get ice creams. Now I’ve always been a massive loop the loop fan, surpassed only by my love of feasts (in particular mint feasts) but since it was so hot out I vouched for the more refreshing option of a tried and tested loop the loop.

I’m sure this isn’t groundbreaking news to most of you but I just have bring to light the crime that is todays loop the loops. The loop the loops I remember were rectangular, and chunky and a solid eat! now, they have slowly but surely whittled them down to rocket-shaped piss-takes of their former selves. Not only that, but they are generally narrower and the sections of ice cream seem to have been compressed together even more than usual to make it even smaller still.

So two fingers to HB for being greedy bastards. Bring back the old ones!

If you have recently been vexed by shrinking confectionary, please, let us know!

Any rant is a good rant.

If you have noticed this noticed you will notice that this notice is a notice not worth noticing. Therefore you should not have noticed this notice in the first place. If I ever notice you noticing this notice again, you will be noticed as an idiot. End of notice.

Hey all, just thought id share this letter we received the other day with you… Looks like there will be no more parties in Gaffbhala..

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To the residents of no. __ Glenageary Park,

I am writing on behalf of your immediate neighbours of Glenageary Park road to formally complain about the behaviour witnessed over the last few months in and around your place of residence.

I have received numerous complaints from residents of Glenageary Park of late night parties with music of excessive, and frankly unacceptable levels, crowds of people coming and going from the premises at all hours of the night, and general rowdy behaviour which shows a severe lack of respect or consideration for the other residents of the street. One incident in particular was on the night of Good Friday, the 21st March, on which a resident of Glenageary Park who shall remain unnamed, was forced to call over to the house to request that the music be turned down, to be greeted by a horde of drunken party goers.

The road you live on is in a quiet neighbourhood comprising mainly of middle-age to elderly residents, who have never had to put up with such loutish behaviour in the past. Upon speaking with these people personally, it is clear to me that you made no effort to introduce yourselves to the neighbourhood, or to show an ounce of respect for the people who were here before you.

I strongly advise that the next time you plan to throw a party of any size, that you make it know to your neighbours, and accept with good grace should they inform you that they may not be happy with the idea.

Failure to respect the wishes of your neighbours in future the will result in the involvement of the Gardai.


Sincerely,

<name removed>

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So there you have it. We’ll keep you posted on any more info we have on this.

One day last month, Ali made a lasagne. It was pretty nice and since I hadn’t had lasagne in ages, it inspired me to make the lasagne to end all lasagnes from scratch. I decided to make a huge one that I could get about eight portions out of to freeze for future dinners. And so I began cooking enthusiastically with 2 packs of mince and 2 whole blocks of cheese. The making of the meaty sauce went pretty smoothly however the cheese sauce did not fare so well. In making it, I managed to burn the bottom of the saucepan. Convinced that this was only a minor setback, I ploughed on with my project. Sure enough, once the cheese sauce was finished, it had this nasty burnt taste to it. I naively still believed that once the whole lot was baked in the oven, the burnt taste would go away. How wrong I was!

The lasagne came out of the oven fresh and bubbling and looking amazing however when I tasted it, it still had that relentless burnt taste to it. I tried and tried to like it but I just couldn’t eat it. It was ruined. It didn’t stop Ali and Wig eating it mind you. They were delighted to have a whole massive lasagne to themselves! I don’t know – call me a perfectionist or whatever but in my opinion it was inedible.

Most people would have been discouraged by such a disaster but not me. The very next day I went out and bought two more packs of mince and two more blocks of cheese. I diligently started again from scratch. I had a hankering for lasagne and I was damn well going to have one! Long story short, the mighty lasagne mark II was a success. There was no burning of the cheese sauce and the end product was to die for. I ate a portion for dinner that night while Ali and Wig ate leftover burnt lasagne (haha!) and managed to freeze another five portions.

About a week later, I was home late from work and didn’t really have time to cook dinner. This was the ideal time for me to defrost one of my beautiful lasagne portions. I defrosted it in the microwave a tiny bit before chucking it in the oven to heat it properly. 20 minutes later, the oven was beeping at me like crazy to check it. I extracted the portion and quickly determined that all it required was five more minutes until it was ready to eat. Oh no! In the process of returning the lasagne portion to the oven, I dropped the oven tray and it landed face down, squashing my beautiful lasagne between it and the cold, dirty kitchen floor.

I couldn’t believe it, I wanted to scream. All I wanted in the world was a slice of lasagne. Was that too much to ask?!? In the end I went ahead and defrosted yet another slice of lasagne which I managed to prepare ok. However I am now very wary of lasagne. I don’t think I’m ever meant to really eat it. Whenever I try, there just seems to be trouble. Think I’ll stick to cheese on toast in future…