Broithe

I intended to be there yesterday, but I'm still on the western island. I did organise an agent to attend for me and ensure that standards were being adhered to in my absence.

I initially thought you meant these were pictures from today. I was about to start the car up...

I believe that the ore from Galmoy is planned to be taken by road to Waterford, when extraction starts again shortly. I should be having an expedition with my tame(?) informant on the inside and I might remember to ask her. They are currently ramping up the extraction of the water from the flooded workings and just popping out there in the early hours to check on things is not helping someone who admits to not being a 'morning person' at the best of times... There was a vague plan for a line from Ballybrophy to Perry's Brewery in Rathdowney, but nothing ever came of it - maybe that could be resurrected as a line to the Dawn Meats plant, as it now is, and then onto to the mine a bit further south? Probably not...

I have just spent an hour in a pub listening to people whingeing about traffic issues in Laois and wondering if they've been to England in this century. My place in England is in a one-horse town in the arse-end of nowhere and I have never suffered congestion, obstruction and general difficulties in driving anywhere near that in the Republic. The roadworks near my house there are a quarter of the way into their ninth year now, with no end in sight. Some roadworks in Wales ended this year - after 23 years - so we may need to be patient. Goods traffic on rail will always be problematic in a small sparsely populated country with no large inland centres. If you have to load stuff onto trucks to get it to the railhead, and then offload it into trucks again, to move on to the final destination, then, on a small island, you will need to look at the numbers carefully to see if it's even worth the bother, or just leave it in the trucks and drive them all the way there.

A diversion due to roadworks was an excuse for my first visit since the water tower went. The space will be useful, I expect. The car parking was essentially full. I managed to find the single vacant space in the main section, but only because someone had parked outside a space earlier in the day There were four empty spaces on the road section, right up by the bridge on the main road.

The curves aren't quite right...

I twigged early on that we might be barking up the wrong tree.

This is alleged to be the only close-up photo of a Concorde flying supersonic. It was taken in 1985, from a Tornado, over the Irish Sea (it says, but probably a bit further south, I suspect). It was slowed up a bit, to around Mach 1.5/6 for the event. A Lightning was a fairly rough device. Not the most reliable aircraft ever built. As with many things, it was notable that they never really sold any. The Saudis had some, but you sort of have to pay them to 'buy' anything....

Lots of Lightnings - including one on a stick at the gate - and the front of one used for a flight simulator. Plus loads of other stuff, Vulcans, Canberras, Meteors, Argosies, Belfasts, etc - and loads of stuff passing through. The link I posted works, but the link on there to further pictures gets a 404 for me. About forty married quarters were rendered uninhabitable, plus loads of other damage- it looked like someone had run a Hoover over a life-sized model layout...

I often casually mention that we had a tornado at Akrotiri in 1969. People, of course, dispute this, not spotting that I have said it with a lower case t, rather than a capital T. https://www.limassolchamber.eu/En/26/articles/238/2016/10/07/Massive-disaster-in-Limassol-in-1969 There was a page with further pictures on there, but the link seems dead. The event was very violent, but with no fatalities on the base itself. There had been a tremendous hailstorm just before it came on land, so few people were outside when stuff started flying around and falling back down. Quite a few houses were demolished and we had a family billeted with us for a few weeks, whilst things were patched up.

People should pay heed to the good words. Their whole afterlife is at steak.

I understand that it was a good, down-to-earth sermon, with no bull.

Mmm, she might have to live south of the border, but it should be Portlaoise or Ballybrophy for her, I think.

Anyone who has paid proper attention to the shipping forecast would know that a wind can only veer in one direction, to the right. Turning to the left is backing. https://jollyparrot.co.uk/blog/the-difference-between-a-backing-and-veering-wind-489

Tralee Cummins. It could be changed every year...

If it was still open, Abbeyleix Day-Lewis. Roscrea Tsikhanouskaya.

Sorry for the late reply... We went to Emo yesterday and, chatting to the Information Officer, this photo was mentioned. She was unaware of it and I said I would source it for her. I found it in the book here, but it doesn't seem to exist publicly online anywhere. In Father Browne's Laois - on page 105.

Killarney Fassbender.

The chap across the road is from Kerry and he struggled with it. I love the fact that that was a genuine evening news item and it might as well have been in Klingon... Some my remember the old Pirelli tyre adverts. They were much easier to follow.

To be fair, it can be a bit of a challenge...

Galmoy Mine, in the north of Co Kilkenny, is in the process of reopening. I have heard talk of the fairly 'strong' ore from there being mixed with other ore from elsewhere, to achieve a more saleable product. I have an inside woman in there, I do know that she has been up to Navan recently. I might slightly interrogate her, if it doesn't rain tomorrow evening. Having escaped from 'industry' a while back, I don't generally get too involved with what she is doing there. One amusing thing, which happened recently, was that, being German and with a strong history in shipbuilding, she was surprised to come across a term in the waste water treatment plant which she didn't recognise. Goul Pump. Wanting to know what sort of specialist pump this might be, she made some enquiries, but Google was completely unhelpful, and it took her a fortnight to find out, without asking any of the generally older males in the organisation. There is a company in England called Gould Pumps, but their stuff is fairly ordinary and it is spelled 'Goul' in many places in the paperwork, so it was not that. It turns out that this may be the only Goul Pump on the planet. Eventually, she did find out what it meant and felt safe asking me on one of our hiking expeditions. "Do you know what a Goul pump is?" "Not really, but that'll just be the pump that sends the waste water into the River Goul, I presume". If I'd been listening carefully, I might have learned the German word for "Bollocks!".

HSTs are having some issues in Mexico. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0veas8J9ygJy11zXkYJX1aNb8u6jjMWqWxwTV8W2aLqhx7echzKGWM6f9ykU7gDb3l&id=61551481905785

Landslide in Norway cuts motorway and the adjacent railway. A long way round for the bus replacement service for a while yet...

And the chassis were black.