New Ink

When I was a kid, my parents always tried to persuade me to spend my money on something that would last, rather than spend it on booze, drugs or other short lived thrills. I never took much note of investing money in stuff that would be beneficial beyond next week but, when I was 19 and they buggered off to France for 3 weeks, leaving me and my sister home alone, I decided to follow up on their advice.

I took the train to Amsterdam and made my way to Hanky Panky, the tattoo shop that was then owned by notorious tattoo artist, madman, poet and Hell’s Angels associate Henk Schiffmacher. Ofcourse, the big man himself was too busy to attend to mere tourists like me, so I was tattooed by his right hand man Molly. Happy with my new long term investment, I went home and found that my sister had also organised a nice homecoming surprise for my parents by getting herself a purple mohawk haircut. When my parents came home about a week later, and sat down to tell their stories of 3 weeks of childless bliss in the South of France, I told them that I had taken their advice and spent money on something that would last me forever. They probably expected me to tell them that I had started taking driving lessons, had opened a savings account or had created a time capsule and buried it in the back garden. When I told him my new investment would stay with me until I died, and rolled up my sleeve to show my tattoo, they weren’t even disappointed. My mom even liked it and told me she thought I had been brave to walk in to the Hell’s Angels tattoo shop and have some rough biker repeatedly stick a needle in my arm for an hour. I was O So proud of my tattoo. I showed it off to everyone and got very positive reactions. This made me consider that getting another tattoo would be even cooler, so after some 2 years of evaluating and discarding designs, I went back to Hanky Panky and got my second tattoo. Again, I got very positive reactions which, ofcourse, made me want a third one. However, after my second tattoo, it took a long time to finally get around to having a third done. For over 12 years I planned having it done, but it never materialised. The main reason for this are mainly that I am crap at handling money. Saving is one thing I just can’t work out. And whenever I did manage to get some money together, something would always come up. I would be invited to come to Germany, Brussels or wherever for the weekend, my stereo would break down, or I would get a ridiculous energy bill out of the blue. For some reason or other, my third tattoo never happened. The positive thing about this, is that I have had over a decade to think about designs. Thinking for a long time about what you are getting tattooed leaves you with the possibility to reconsider and change your mind. I am very happy that I did take my time for this because, looking back on it, some designs I have considered over the past 15 years would not have been my choice of today. The downside is that most of my friends, even the ones that are a decade younger than me, have more tattoos. Then again, it’s not a race for who gets to be ‘full’ first. And on top of that, I still have plenty of space on my body to get new tattoos whereas my brother in law has only a couple of square inches left anywhere, so he can’t get any new ones done anymore.

So, having lived in Dublin for 3 ½ years now, I decided that the time was right and last Thursday I finally went to get a new tattoo. My mate Phil from Connected Ink in Temple Bar tattooed me and this is the end result:

I think the end result is really cool. My new tattoo has sparked my enthousiasm for tattoos again and I will be developing more ideas for new ones. The tattoo is the logo of my favorite beer in the world, the Dutch Hertog Jan, an excellent beer that is not exported and is primarily sold in the South and West of Holland. Now let’s see if I can lure the brewery into using my tattoo for promotional activities resulting in free beer for me.

For now, I’m heading off to the pub to watch Australia – New Zealand for the Tri Nations and a couple of football matches after that.

Cheers!

Lennard

Dodging bullets

I was reading a local paper this morning, and found this piece of news:

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/three-men-injured-in-pub-shooting-2272536.html

A shooting in a pub is awful enough as it is, but this one is especially scary for me personally, because I visit this pub quite regularly. In fact, I visit this pub every weekend during the football season because this is the pub where the local Celtic supporters go to watch the games.



The pub is also popular with gaelic football fans as it is only a couple of minutes from Croke Park stadium.
Nobody died, but the people injured in the attack are still in critical condition in local hospitals.

In Holland, when there is a death or a shooting in a pub, it has to close for 3 months, pending investigation, and to let the situation cool down a bit to prevent retaliation attacks.
I don't know how the rules are here in Ireland, but I have read stories about similar shootings and pub close for a day to clean up the mess and are back in business the next day.
I guess I'll head over to good old Murray's for the game tomorrow..

Death of a Champion

The main news feat of this weekend was, ofcourse, the passing of one of snooker’s all time greatest players, Alex Higgins. While his death hardly comes as a surprise, it was still difficult to accept that one of the game’s great champions is no longer there.

Higgins was born in the same year as my mother, died in the same year as my mother and as a result of the same disease. And that is where the comparison stops. Higgins was a chainsmoking, alcoholic mad man, who lived life in the fast lane and spent his fortune on drink, drugs and gambling. He lived the last years of his life in poverty, making money by hustling players in the snooker halls of his native Belfast. Even though he was born to a Protestant family, Higgins considered himself Irish and he loved his Guinness. He won the World Championship in 1972 and 1982 and is still the only player to win the World Championships in both the era before the championships moved to Sheffield and in Sheffield’s legendary Crucible theatre. He was as famous for his behaviour off the table as for his snooker prowess. Besides winning most of the game’s major tournaments, Higgins was a notorious drinker, gambler and trouble maker. He spent fortunes on booze, gambling and a lavish lifestyle. He and his mate Jimmy White, also one of the games greats, went on legendary drinking binges that went on for days. Apart from winning 2 World titles, Higgins was also famous for punching a referee for a decision he disagreed with, and for headbutting a tournament director for telling him to behave. Like fellow Belfast man George Best, he rose from a working class background to become a world famous star, idolised by millions of people. And like Best, his excessive lifestyle caught up with him in the end.

Alex Higgins was the most naturally talented snooker player ever, rivalled only in talent and eye for the game by Ronnie O’Sullivan. Higgins’ style of play, combined with the arrival of color television, revolutionised the game and made it one of the most popular games of Great Britain.

Above all, Alex Higgins was the people’s champion and an inspiration to many young snooker players.

Alex Higgins is dead but will be forever remembered for his speed and free flowing style of play.

I raise my glass to The Hurricane in a tribute to one of the most exciting players in snooker history.

Alex, take care.

Welcome

Hi everyone, and welcome to my new Blog.

As some of you will know, and some of you won’t, I have been writing a Blog on Myspace for the past 5 years. This Blog was mainly about counting pubs and related stuff and appeared at varying intervals.

While this subject will continue to play a big part in the stories on this Blog, I will expand my subjects and also talk to you about sports, music, current events, travel, food and general stuff happening in Dublin, or wherever I happen to be at the time of writing. I will shortly post a list of all the pubs I wrote about on my old Blog and will continue to count them in the future. But my old Blog will soon be history.

So, feel free to post your feedback, e-mail me on talesfromthewoolshed(a)gmail.com or just drop me a line with your thoughts. I can’t guarantee I will react to everything because besides writing this Blog, I also have a job, friends that I want to hang out with, places to travel and, well, pubs to visit.

I will also comment on things that I find inspiring, entertaining or annoying. I will post top5 lists on topics that I find interesting, like the greatest sporting moments in history, the best songs, albums or pizzas and other things I deem worthy of talking about.

The name of this Blog was inspired by my favorite pub. I estimate that I must have visited around 2.500 pubs, bars and other hostelries in my life. And The Woolshed is among my favorite ones and my current hang out. On top of that, this name sounds great and is easy to remember. When I hit the 500 mark of pubs counted since I started to keep a list, I will publish a top5 of the greatest bars .

To prevent any misunderstandings in relation to the name of this Blog: I am not employed by or in any other way professionally connected to The Woolshed Bar&Grill in Dublin. I have absolutely no say in what happens there, what is decided, what music is played or who is allowed in or what goes on the menu. I just spend a lot of time there and I love being there. The opinions on this Blog are mine and mine alone and in no way represent the opinion of the owners, management or staff of this place. If you are in any way annoyed or offended by what I write, talk to me and not them because it is me who writes this. On the other hand, if you enjoy this Blog, and want to praise it, also talk to me and let me know what you think.

Having gone past the opening remarks, I would now like to kick off with 2 stories that appeared in the papers today regarding Irish football.

First up, my congratulations go out to my favorite local football team, Shamrock Rovers. Last night, they went through to the next round of the UEFA Cup after beating Bnei Yehuda from Israel by 0-1. Beating an Israeli team in a European tournament is quite an achievement in itself, because israel is not in Europe. Things like this leave you wondering when we will see Arsenal take on Bloemfontein Celtic in the Champions League, Bayern Munich play Melbourne Victory, or Real Madrid beat Gamba Osaka. Either way, Shamrock Rovers will now play Juventus in the next round of the tournament, which means a massive exposure for the team and a great way to cash in on tv rights, merchandising and ticket sales. The reason I bring this up is this; directly after the win last night, journalists and stadium directors across the country were falling over each other in suggesting that the Rovers home game should be moved to a bigger ground. The Rovers home ground, in the southern Dublin suburb of Tallaght, holds only 6.000 people, and that is after erecting temporary stands to the side of the pitch where a new stand is planned. The general idea was to move the game to either the RDS, which will hold about 20.000 fans, or the newly rebuilt Lansdowne Road stadium, that will hold 50.000. To my delight, Rovers refused. ‘We are from Tallaght, and we play in Tallaght, and we want to keep one of the biggest games in the club’s history close to the people that have always supported us.’ I love this. Rather than taking the money, the club stood firm and insists they play the game at home.

Apart from that, playing the game in one of the suggested alternative venues would not really work. The RDS is basically a nice venue, but it was built to accomodate horse showjumping events. Even if they do manage to get the pitch back in shape after yet another horse show, the stands are not good for watching ball games. The Leinster rugby team play most of their home games in the Magner’s League there and the stands have strange viewing lines and there are massive poles holding up the roof which block your view.

The new Lansdowne Road (yes, I do refuse to call it the Aviva Stadium because that is not a name for a stadium) would suit better, because there are no horses ruining the pitch and no roof poles obstructing your view, but Lansdowne Road has other problems. First of all, it’s a brand new stadium and, as everybody knows, it takes time to create atmosphere in a new stadium. When Arsenal moved from the excellent, but admittedly somewhat claustrophobic, Highbury to the brand new Emirates Stadium (no points for guessing who was the Big Provider in that development) it took the fans a year and a half to find their place, get the atmosphere going and make it their home. Similar things have happened in the Schalke Arena in Germany and, longer ago, the Amsterdam Arena.

Apart from that, the Rovers-Juventus game will be played next week, while the stadium’s official opening game is not until the week after that, on the 4^th of August. Which brings me to the second piece of sports news that I wanted to talk about; the offical opening game of the rebuilt Lansdowne Road stadium is being widely advertised as Ireland – Manchester United. While this looks like an excellent bill, there is a catch to it. Manchester United is obviously a big name in world football and a great team to have at a stadium opening (or any event for that matter), especially since they are, after Celtic, the most popular team in Ireland. On top of that, Alex Ferguson has announced today that it is likely that the big names will make their first appearance after the World Cup in this game. Rooney, Vidic and all the others should be sufficiently rested by now to take on Ireland. The ‘Ireland’ team that they are playing, however, is not what it seems. It is not the Irish national team, as coached by Giovanni Trappatoni. It is an ‘All Star’ selection of players from the Irish Premier League. So rather than having a chance to see superstars like Tottenham striker Robbie Keane, Fulham’s Damien Duff and Celtic’s Aiden McGeady, you will be watching players who ply their trade at Dundalk FC, Drogheda United or, believe it or not, Sporting Fingal. And with ticket prices starting from EUR 45,- for a seat behind one of the goals or up in the rafters, and rising to EUR 60,- for a spot nearer to the pitch, I think you could find better ways to spend your money.

One of the ways I always favor to spend my money is by going to the pub. I will continue to explore the pubs of Dublin and the world and I will tell you about where I have been and where I plan to go. My next trips include going to Galway tomorrow, a weekend in Holland at the end of August, for the wedding of one of my best friends and then, in September, it is the Big One for this year, and I will be heading off to Australia. But more on that later. For now, I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope to see you back here soon.

I am going to grab another beer.

Cheers!

Lennard