Festivals, Festivals – Everywhere…

The 'main stage' just prior to Khaled's takeover...

Ok, I know I said the next thrilling instalment of my pretending to be an outsider in my own city series was coming along next, but I’ve already written it so it’s not like there’ll be a big delay posting it…much. Since this is more recent, I reckoned I’d post about this past weekend’s festivals instead for today – which by all accounts, made it look like festivals in Ireland come along in roughly the same order as Dublin Buses, i.e. a number of them all turn up at once, after you’ve waited ages. Bray, which is only down the road for me, put on their annual ‘summerfest’, which used to consist of the ‘Miss Face of Bray’ competition (I know, I know – it sounds funny, but I’ve known at least one entrant in it every year so I actually can’t really publicly deride it as much as I’d ordinarily like to), elements of Funderland scattered along the coast, and the big wheel somehow awkwardly set up halfway up Bray Head, which I could never quite figure out and never took a go on for fear the whole assembly would blow clean off into the sea as soon my gondola had reached the top of the wheel, prompting me to take an impromptu summer ‘dip’. Anyway, what was I saying? Back on-topic – so this weekend, we were spoilt for choice, between the Dun Laoghaire Festival of World Cultures, or the Bray Summerfest, which decided to put on its annual ‘airshow’ this Sunday – the decision was a tough one, but in the end we decided to try the Festival of World Cultures on Saturday and hit Bray on Sunday.

Big wheels all over Dublin...

I suppose the reasoning behind us not doing festivals on a large scale such as this too often are that most people here take it as a great opportunity to get ‘legitimately’ legless and that most of the time it’s sloshing rain. So by that token, by running a number of events around the same time, if the weather’s rubbish well then people can just choose which event they genuinely want to go to and there can only be so many people wasted at the one location. Either way, it’s a terrible shame because other countries, notably Germany is what springs to mind here, run some sort of festival (yeah ok, not really a good time to mention Germany and festivals, but you get what I mean) nearly every weekend in the bigger cities and they’re usually well-attended and great fun. Perhaps we’d all get bored if we had something to do every weekend and stop going? Who knows, it doesn’t look like we’ll ever find out. The Dun Laoghaire festival was, to put it mildly, absolutely jam-packed – completely and utterly packed. We cycled down from Shankill, locked our bikes (after I’d had a temporary and quite intense ‘stare-off’ with some car driver around Monkstown who felt that his pathetically small vehicle couldn’t possibly co-incide side by side, nor overtake my equally narrow bicycle, which ended with him trying to beep me off the road and me stopping and commencing the aforementioned ‘stare-off’ like all good city cyclists) and tried to move along through the crowds, but were instead more or less carried along. No doubt the sights and smells of the food up opposite the DART station and along towards the metals were crazy delicious, but we unfortunately couldn’t stop and were carried along to some sort of ‘tents from around the world section’.

One of many camouflaged shots from the day...

Incidentally, they hadn’t been placed there with any semblance of geographical identity – Ireland stood proud on either side of Kenya for example, while France cropped up in a number of places, interrupted only once by the presence of Northern Thailand; that’s right, Northern Thailand explicitly, not inclusive of the South. Moving along from there, it turned out there was a much larger ‘Global Village’ that had all sorts of other countries present, like Singapore, India (who also seem to have largely colonized the People’s Park, with whole entertainment tents, food stands aplenty and all sorts of other things), Germany and whole parts of Thailand. Altogether, the whole area around the Carlisle Pier was more like a Model United Nations than anything else, and was actually pretty cool, even if I could have stayed there just eating from one stand to the next all day long. Moving along down the coast, people were busy getting in touch with other cultures by standing in queues upwards of 20 minutes for an ice cream from Teddy’s, followed by which there were even more food stands, a big wheel and the ‘main stage’ if that’s what you want to call it. As it happened, the world-famous superstar, Khaled was to play at 6pm and we stayed to hear the beginning of his performance but unfortunately decided the music wasn’t really for us – even though there were a number of slightly inebriated middle-agers dancing around by themselves and reliving their hippy days – and also, we had no idea who he was or what the ‘King of Rai’ possibly meant. What I did know though, was what a Bacardi meant so we hit the bar and called it a day.

Like a scene from Glastonbury...

Day 2 of our hardcore festival attendance and we took our chances and went to Bray to see the airshow. As it happened, we were extremely late leaving the house and we were actually only locking our bikes at 3.30. Just as well too – they were closer to 4 by the time anything happened, it actually coincided more or less perfectly with precisely when the clouds went grey, rendering any sort of spectacular photography on my part more or less impossible. It was a good airshow, don’t get me wrong, but sitting on the beach for so long eventually necessitated a sneaky break – only for us to find out that in the middle of the beach (where the majority of people were), there was actually commentary being broadcast that we were completely missing out on, which was unfortunate and came a little too late, as we watched the last of the show. Anyone who read the earlier paragraph on the Bray Summerfest will however be happy to know that even though the wheel being halfway up Bray Head made little to no sense, it continues its nonsensical placement by being right on the pebbles of the beach this time round, propped up by bits of wood. As for Miss Face of Bray – I’m not sure there is one this year, and if there is, I take comfort in saying I definitely don’t know any of the entrants anymore. So after that, it’s back to work for the week and then we’ll see what next weekend brings…

Did anyone make it out to any of the events around Dublin this weekend? Any thoughts on them? I’d love to hear them…

Trying To Be An Outsider – Part 1…

If you're lucky, you might even see this little guy downtown...

Aside from my natural curiosity about why we seem to do so well attracting tourists over here (or at least, used to do so well, before we had to start offering ‘Irish citizenship’ discount cards to attract people over), my friend Fintan bought me a book some years ago for Christmas that offered up various ways to ‘travel’ that made little to no sense – it offered up such suggestions as going for an ‘adventure’ by leaving your house and taking say, a left, and walking as far as you could, then a right, then a left again, and so on for as long as you could until you could walk/cycle/drive no further, and see where you ended up and if you arrived somewhere new – as it happens, I actually took up this suggestion mentally and drove my imaginary vehicle out of my house, left up the road, right onto the main estate road, left through Shankill, right out towards the N11 roundabout…anyway, you get the idea, on and on and finally, in my head (and with a little help from Google maps), the furthest I could reasonably make was about as far as Stepaside. Or the book might suggest something along the lines of using mobile phones to play a game of monopoly across an entire region, where you all had to drive around various towns and pretend to own or buy them – that kind of time-taking, expensive lunacy. But another, slightly more logical, suggestion the book offered, was to abandon normality for a weekend, book a hostel, and spend a weekend ‘visiting’ your own city, exactly as you would anywhere else. The whole thing sounds like complete lunacy, but amid people telling me how lucky I am to live here, it began to sound a little less crazy. So much less crazy in fact, that I decided to do it, so here’s how it’ll work.

No postcards I'm afraid...just pictures instead...

First of all, by the time I get round to writing all of this, it’ll already have been done – so don’t expect any postcards. Second of all, in order to save money and whatnot, I’m going to stay in my house and not sample the unquestioned delights of Dublin hostels. Finally, I’m going to do my ‘time’ in Dublin exactly as I would if I was visiting another place – say for example, when I went to Oslo back in February. What that usually means is being as absolutely tight-fisted as I can be, seeing as many of the ‘free’ attractions as I can and trying to get out of the city itself for at least a day to see something that’s not just a pile of buildings. So, here we go – first stop, that sum of all human knowledge, Wikipedia, to see what there is to do in Dublin for my fictitious weekend away. In terms of pictures, which is what I tend to spend most of my time on a Wikipedia article looking at since they can’t really be made up like the rest of the article, it shows Christchurch, O’Connell St., the GPO, Temple Bar (which it does say is ‘best left to tourists’, so we’ll more than likely skip that), the Liffey and Grafton Street. It also directs to pictures of Dalkey and Killiney, which by anyone’s standards looks ideal and might be a place to go to get out of the city. Needless to say, it’s very difficult to pretend you don’t know a place and start from scratch, but let’s give it a try. The hardest initial thing about visiting any new place, for me at least, is simply getting downtown – I remember myself and another Irish lad willing a taxi driver to hurry along the crowded motorways of Kuala Lumpur to get us back to the airport on time (in fact, we weren’t looking to get to the airport with him, we were looking to just get to the train station for the ‘KLIA Ekspres’, which is probably why he took the slow motorways in the first place). But the difficulty is I’d know exactly how to get downtown from pretty much anywhere that tourists arrive, unless I arrived into Shannon, so we’ll skip this bit and that’ll allow me just take the DART into Connolly from home instead.

The GPO - probably O'Connell St.'s best thing to see?

We move along slowly stop by stop, with the weather for any trip I’m on being typically unpleasant. Generally, how I do ‘short weekend breaks’ where possible, is try and fly out either Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning and stay a minimum amount of nights, generally aiming to arrive early/depart late over a normal weekend or worst case scenario (and in the case of Oslo, it really was the ‘worst case’, depart on the Monday as soon as there’s a cheap flight. In the meantime, the DART pulls into Connolly, and as it does, I pull out my map of Dublin, try hard to erase any knowledge I have of the place and start wandering along – ending up in the main part of the station a few minutes later, feeling satisfied that I could still be so confused trying to get out of a train station I actually should know. Out onto O’Connell Street then for our first look at Dublin as an outsider and being honest, trying to see it from a complete outsider’s point of view, it’s very hard to know what to make of it – there’s not really actually a lot on it. It’s extremely widely spaced, incredibly busy, one end seems to just taper off abruptly, the other crossing the river and more than anything, it just comes across as void of any major excitement, bar maybe the GPO, which by anyone’s standards is an amazing building, and something that holds my attention long enough for me to wander inside and out of it, stopping and reading anything of interest. The major axis, around which the street seems to centre though, is undoubtedly the spire and this is one thing that looks well sitting right in the middle of the street, almost commanding order. That said, it can hold my attention for no more than a few minutes, and once I begin to feel dizzy looking up at how it seems to actually be swaying, it’s time to move on up the road, and onto the famed Liffey that appears so frequently on Wikipedia. I make a mental note, standing on the bridge of the Liffey, to come back later and get a picture of the river and the lights, and in the meantime continue my journey on up the street, following my map towards my next stop – Grafton Street.

Panorama of O'Connell St. - take it in...(click to enlarge)

Dublin's most generic shopping street...

Finding Grafton Street, from crossing the Liffey is actually slightly more complicated when you’re working off a map and street signs, for the reason that every other street seems to sort of disguise it. Along the way though, I pass a number of closed shops, buildings to let, a tacky arcade – it seems at least, that the stretch between O’Connell Street and Grafton Street is a bit of a no-mans land, but nonetheless, I follow my map and go up and around the front of Trinity College and onto the bottom of Grafton Street. While I can appreciate the relative niceness of the street, there’s no denying that it looks just about the same as any other major shopping street in any worldwide city, and I walk the length of it, ending up at St. Stephen’s Green, before cutting across to see the Dáil further down the street. Again, you don’t notice it so much when you’re used to it, but there’s a high proportion of homeless people lined up along the street by St. Stephen’s Green and it doesn’t make for a pleasant welcome. The dáil, for such a supposedly major institution, is sort of hidden far back from the street and seems pretty unaccessible, so I decide to cut my losses and, all of which will be covered next time, head for the rest of the ‘free sights’ of the city before finishing up the day somewhere with a pint and decide what to do on Day 2 of my ‘visit’ to Dublin City, all as I say, coming up in Part 2!

Where would you recommend people go and visit in Dublin? Or what would you want to see if you’d never been here before? Is there any Dublin attraction you’d force anyone visiting to go to?

Driving Up The Wall…

Right, let's try again...

A couple of years ago, I begun learning how to drive. The first step was to try and get what was then a provisional license (now a learners permit, or some such junk) and then try and organise a few lessons, even though an amount of my friends had taken literally one or two lessons and had since been driving everywhere unaccompanied (with no real problem, due to Ireland’s arcane licensing laws, which more or less provided no punishment of any severity for ignoring the rules), awaiting their test date off in the future. As luck had it, I knew a driving instructor at the time from where I was working who was doing ‘discounts’ for people working there (all 5 of us), and so I begun my lessons with this individual. While I’ve no doubt that he was a fine instructor, the other ridiculous part of Ireland’s pointless (if you’ll pardon the pun) licensing laws is that at the time at least, anyone with a licence could just set up their own driving school and get going – in fact, up to a year ago, a friend of mine was considering doing just that. So, as a result, while he himself was fine, this instructor’s car (and before someone leaves a comment saying ‘bad workman blames his tools’ and all that, another friend of mine also took lessons from the same guy and we’ve both come to the conclusion that it wasn’t just us) seems to have been completely overworked over the years pretty much to the point of no return. The first and most troubling sign of this was in the clutch and its ‘bite’. Now listen, I’ve driven a couple of different cars since this particular vehicle, and I can assure you that none were as cantankerous as this car. The clutch didn’t have so much a ‘bite’, as requiring near-pinpoint accuracy to depress the clutch pedal only to the precise space required; too much and the car would cut out, start jumping around the place, or otherwise make you look like an idiot if you were within sight of anyone other than the instructor.

This time, I'll be trying my hardest not to ever be at the helm of a Micra...

Put it this way, it was so exact, that when I got into our Citroen C4 at home and tried driving that, the act of giving up on the clutch and pressing down on the accelerator was more like driving a go-kart than driving the same sort of temperamental beast as the instructor’s ageing Micra. Even uphill starts proved to be no problem at all, requiring only the mildest concentration to taking my foot off the clutch and the other onto the accelerator, before the car nearly overcame the handbrake by itself and roared up the rest of the hill. By contrast, I had an incredibly embarrassing incident once whilst attempting to ascend a hill in Bray in the argumentative Micra. Suffice to say that what happened was that I attempted to scale this particular hillock in far higher a gear than it was possible to do, and stalled as a result – mea culpa, my fault – so I then attempted to ‘relight the engines’ as it were, and this is when the fun began. Engine on, foot down on clutch, hand on handbrake ready for the off and steadily, as a queue of Bray locals gathered behind me in their cars, I applied gentle force on the accelerator pedal, while very gently releasing the clutch, knowing fine well that the ‘bite’ would take some amount of work. It did – a lot of work, in fact. By the time I finally felt the car want to move forward under its own power, my foot was about ¾ down on the accelerator – enough that we were almost certainly going to be propelled forward with the force of an F16 wanting to depart from an aircraft carrier in the gulf, while I was still holding tightly on the clutch for fear the car would give up again at any moment. Finally, with the little engine of the Micra putting out more noise than a departing Space Shuttle, I let the handbrake slowly go, much to the joy (no doubt) of those now trapped behind me for the guts of two minutes. The weird thing about the car as well was that, even once the car begun forward motion, it was necessary to continue ‘holding’ the clutch, lest the car give up the ghost again. And with that, we were literally catapulted up the remainder of the hill like a pair of unassuming rally participants.

I love the smell of Shannon before a driving test; the morning of...

Would you believe it, but in spite of my complete and utter lack of success with driving to date at that time, I pressed ahead and registered to do my driving test (this was back at a time when the waiting lists were an absolute national scandal) – and not just did I register to do it, I registered to do it in Athlone, where the waiting time was minimal. So minimal in fact, that I was actually (and rather unfortunately) called for an appointment much earlier than I could have possibly wanted or was ready for, but decided to try it anyway, having successfully since dispensed with the services of my driving instructor and his Micra. So, down we went, the day before I was due to be doing my test to have a ‘practice’ run with a local instructor – my first time dealing with another instructor since the former experience. This, like the previous driving lessons, was to prove to be another hilarious episode in my driving career. The man firstly did not appreciate my style of driving, which in Dublin placed an emphasis on minding my speed, slowing down in advance of a potential obstacle and minding your position on the road, in order to safely compete with the cyclists, buses, other cars, etc that we have using roads in Dublin. To begin with, I had pulled the car in so tightly (and I don’t mind saying it) to the kerb that on our departure, the back wheel scrubbed the kerb slightly, and this elicited a shock from our man, who declared that I should’ve seen it a mile away – of course I did, but how else was I to turn the car out into the traffic, without reversing and moving forward over and over, moving slightly further out into the road each time? Then we came across a dog on the road and I instinctively begun to slow down – apparently though, that was wrong, the correct procedure for such a situation in fact is to increase your speed, preferably as much as possible and expect that the animal will have the good sense and predictability (as they always do) to move out of your way.

Oops...

Likewise, our (unimaginable, but present) cultural differences added to the problem – with potholes being relabelled as ‘dug-outs’, me not knowing what that was supposed to be, subsequently knocking the car through it with sufficient force to throw our man out of his seat and make contact with the roof – all in all, it didn’t bode well. The final piece of damning news came the morning of the test when it turned out that they had a ‘visiting inspector’ who apparently was notorious for not liking people from the ‘city’, which one exactly, I didn’t dare ask, they all have their charms. Anyway, whether or not I got that particular inspector, we’ll never know; I thought it best not to inquire if it was himself who hated people from the city, or was that someone else. Either way, the differences between the roads in Dublin and Athlone made my shoddy driving magnify itself splendidly at the time of the exam – although I managed the hill-start with the skill of a hardened veteran after my practice in the Micra, managed the whole positioning on the road thing with perfect accuracy and was able to get the car moving from a standing start almost to an unnoticeable glide, the width of the roads meant that a ‘3-point turn’ wasn’t possible anywhere in Athlone and instead required a ‘7-point, but some people do it in 5-point turn’, followed on quickly by a series of very confusing roundabouts that were the smallest, painted on efforts I’ve ever seen and something I’d surely have driven clean over back in Dublin. In the end, it was a valiant effort but put it this way, by 7pm that evening, I was in a big sulk and was putting on a helmet to go for a cycle, not a drive. Unfortunately though, time moves along and there’s only so much longer I can get away with ignoring the vagaries of the Irish driver licensing laws – even if I still don’t think there’s any consistency to the instructors, the tests or the waiting times.

All I can say is, wish me luck, I’ll need it…

Enforcing Change…

Ok UPC, you win this one...

I came back home this weekend from a long week at work to find that after years of avoiding like the plague for the very simple reason of just avoiding it for fun more than anything else, we’d finally caved, and got digital TV. I wasn’t at all surprised – the letters from UPC and enclosed leaflets have been increasingly forceful about the need to change; initially, it would give us so many more channels that we didn’t currently have (not that we cared – Anna had UPC Digital in her last place and by no means was the extra selection any more helpful in finding a decent programme at certain times than our own 15-channel mix), then there was the whole issue of now being able to record onto the special digital recorder box – again, not a problem, since our antiquated set-up nicely facilitated the use of VHS video tape to record anything you may want to see again, or have to miss out on the first time. They even tried us with making digital TV cheaper than our current situation – although they failed to mention whether their ‘cheaper’ price was inclusive of the other TV’s in our house, which I suspect it wasn’t.

And before anyone asks, we were using dial-up to just a year or two ago...

The only reason we got digital in the end, was actually because MTV suddenly disappeared and we were left instead with the useless Channel 6, or whatever it’s called. Then, after that, in their most recent round of engineering works on our road in the middle of the afternoon when I’m trying to sleep, they somehow managed to see off Channel 4, E4 and Discovery Channel from our collection. The extra channels – who cares, the less money but without clarifying if it was multi-room – too much hassle, but slowly cutting down our channels one by one – that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Incidentally, Eircom Phonewatch have been at us over the same thing for donkey’s years to ‘change up’ to a new alarm system, even though the old one seems to be working perfectly fine – initially, they told us that our own system, which had to be ‘at least 15 years old’ was obsolete. Then, we figured out it was only 9 years old, so apparently then it was ‘becoming obsolete’ and must have been ‘one of the last installed’. So, then we pointed out that our neighbours up the road hadn’t upgraded theirs, which was even older still, and the best they could come up was just that it might work out cheaper for us in the long run and we should still just think about it anyway. In fact, the digital ‘episode’ pretty much sums up years of being run off our outdated-yet-still-loved systems by various companies. In one particularly funny incident, Eircom called us once and informed us that as we were paying phone rental (even though in fact, we shouldn’t have been since we owned all the phones in our house outright, so a hefty refund should have been due), we were entitled to a new cordless phone, for them to rent to us, which would be entirely free. Except when we went to order it, it was entirely free, barring an administration, postage and packing charge. Forget it.

Alas, we eventually caved with the bins...

More recently still, a couple of years ago, our local council, Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown, decided that they no longer wanted (or so it seemed) to run waste collection services in our area and slowly but surely, all these private companies started offering way better deals, better collection times, all that good stuff. Although we thought about changing, we somehow ended up with a stash of ‘credit’ on our waste bill – in other words, I don’t know how exactly, but they actually ended up owing us money, no matter how many collections we seemed to be getting. And this wasn’t just a case of a few weeks, it literally went on for months on end. In fact, it got so bad that the salespeople from the other companies seemed to be arriving on a pretty much weekly basis with new offers to try and get us over, while the DLR bin truck just came down our road to collect our bin on its own, and that was the sum total of the collections they were having to make in our estate; it quickly became a pretty laughable situation. Anyway, like with the UPC/Eircom examples, there was just no good reason to change – nobody was saying they actually didn’t want to serve us anymore (even though that was obviously the intention), and the others didn’t have that much else going for them – our collection times didn’t matter, we put the bin out the night before anyway, no amount of ‘cheaper prices’ made any difference since it was pretty much free for us to have our bin lifted as it was, and who cares about the better service – it’s not like they’re picking us up and tipping us into a truck?! In the end, the only reason we eventually left was first of all, out of embarrassment at having to watch the truck drive down our road, which is too tight to turn so if you happen to be driving a truck you have to reverse, just to collect our bin and then have to try reverse all the way back up. And second, Greenstar actually said they’d honour the rest of our credit with DLR – obviously some other lucky winners had been doing the same thing.

Wow, there's even a Sky 3...

So, how do you get people to change something when they don’t want to? In college we used to have this lecturer who taught us organisational change and had the catchphrase (if you like) of ‘I love change’ and used to tell us about how he didn’t run a consultancy, he ran a ‘resultancy’. Which is grand, but that doesn’t mean anyone else particularly likes change, particularly when they don’t see it as being in their favour. For example, I used to work in the airport on 8-hour shifts and much better money than I do now, doing 9-hour shifts – how could I love that change? Likewise, when we had a load of credit on our waste colection, why would we change – and what difference does it really make overall, when you don’t even really think about whether you’re happy or not with the current service? Likewise, with digital TV, we never really cared for it – more crappy channels for more money is hardly a deal worth shouting about from the rooftops, is it? Simply, we were never offered anything that made a difference really, or that we especially wanted; it might have been different if they said they were going to come in and collect the waste from the bin in my room, or that the new TV channels would be purely news, cycling and music – but they weren’t. Also, if you’re going to try and make people change something, don’t confuse them – we have three TV’s in our house and we could never figure out if the ‘cheaper’ price UPC were quoting us included the other TV’s in our place or not, and if it did, then why were they also offering ‘multi-room viewing’ as an added extra. And finally, if you’re going to offer something, make it genuine – a free phone for example, isn’t free if you have to pay well over €10 for some charges.

In the meantime, I’m going to get back down to the TV…

What’s The Point of…The Point?

Here we have the only part that's been completed it would seem...

Exactly two years ago, I used to get the Aircoach across the Liffey every morning and evening (or evening and morning, depending which way my shifts worked out…or which pub I’d stopped into on the way home) en-route to work, and took in the sights of ‘The Point Village’. Two years on, and I’m doing the same thing all over again, except earlier and later than ever, such that I don’t really notice exactly what’s different about it. Today, cycling home from Clontarf, I got a puncture more or less outside The O2’s front door and as a result, I had more than enough time to figure out for myself what’s different – the answer, nothing. A couple of years ago, when I was first passing it on a daily basis, there was all this talk of The Point Village being – you know, the usual things that property marketers seem to trot out rather repetitively – innovative, regenerating, invigorating, giving a new lease of life; basically all the things you normally might use to describe a bar of new soap, and not necessarily another block of quickly thrown-together flats, a hotel and a few shops that can be seen just about anywhere – Dunnes Stores, incidentally, being the anchor tenant from what I read. Quite how that could be described as invigorating or refreshing, or whatever precise term they used to describe the place I don’t know, but the point is, two years on and still looks almost the exact same. In fact, the only thing different about the place now that I look at it closely, is that the old Stena Line ferry is no longer tied up outside the front of The O2.

The breathtaking Dublin wheel...

Oh, and they have a big wheel sitting there on the back of trucks that doesn’t appear to be getting assembled anytime soon. Likewise, there was supposed to be a ‘Point Village Market’ of some description getting cracking around mid-April (I know, because I was planning on going along to it and taking some pictures and trying to scrape together an article for the site actually) and last I heard, it’s only really getting going now. So basically everything’s just running extremely late – when I was crossing the Liffey in 2008, most of the buildings seemed to be already completed and just in need of being fitted out. Do you know what they look like these days? Well they seem to be already completed and just in need of being fitted out. Amazing how you can throw away two years like that. Wikipedia, the source of all credible knowledge meanwhile, reckons that as of mid-2009 the timetable for completion of the village is in ‘doubt’. Well if that was mid-2009, then it must be even more in doubt in mid-2010. But seriously, with the exception of a massive big car park and the Luas stop down at The O2, and of course the redo of The O2 in the first place (and its subsequent commercial renaming from its original The Point Depot to The O2, which would suggest then that the whole village should be renamed to ‘The O2 Village’), you have to wonder is it really necessary to even build all that junk in the first place? Or rather, was it really necessary, even in 2007 or whenever they begun (although given the speed they’re working at, it could also have been around 523 BC)?

Office to rent, anyone? Anyone?

I can just about see the point of the hotel (which I applied for a job in actually, as it happens), since they could expect to do a roaring trade whenever The O2’s putting on something half-decent – although depending on what it is they put on, the hotel could also be trashed, but they must have figured that possibility out for themselves. But what about the apartments – the Luas line to The O2 only opened late last year so before that, presuming things had been completed on time, where would you go to from your apartment? You’d have to trek some distance for something as trivial as a carton of milk – in fact, the only thing easy to get hold of would be a pint out of a plastic cup and a gig guide from across the road. And then there’s the shopping centre – given the size of the area, it’s hardly going to be the next Dundrum so unless it’s designed to service only the people living in the area, who else would go along? I mean, can you really see yourself saying to your friends; ‘I hear there’s a crack-a-lacking shopping centre down by The O2, anyone want to come and join me and drive sort of into town but without actually getting to see any shops other than what’s in this centre?’ – I can’t see the response being great. Same with the cinema – fine for people living in the area, which is pretty much whoever rents or buys those apartments since the only other occupants are ducks and port workers. But if you happen to live in the city centre for example, you’re hardly going to go out of your way to hit The O2 just for a film. And anyone living further south than about Ringsend probably already either goes to Stillorgan, Dun Laoghaire or Dundrum.

The Luas waits...and waits...for passengers...

So that brings us all back to the expansion of The O2, which was always going to be the quickest to make money and as a result seems to be just about the only thing that happened on-time and has been doing just fine ever since. I’d love to know what Veolia think of having to run a Luas service down there when there’s absolutely nothing happening most of the time. Anyway, for the moment, the rest of the development (as pictured), just sticks out like another sore thumb, begging to be taken into Nama as quickly as possible . In the meantime, I’ll keep on wondering as I pass by everyday whether someday I’ll be able to get off there, for no good reason, and watch a film or wander through a shopping centre that’s clearly not in a great location. Considering what passes right outside the front doorstep of the place, a truck stop would probably have been a much more profitable (and more easily do-able) venture. But I guess it’s been said that spending money can be invigorating…

…and I wonder can it also be refreshing and innovative, just like fictitious villages?

Discovering Ireland – And Making a Weekend Escape…

Yes, Discover Ireland and here's the compulsory 'tourist shot'...

For the weekend, we decided to take up Fáilte Ireland’s generous invitation to go and ‘Discover Ireland’ and Anna organised a trip to Rosslare to see what was going on down there. When I was a kid, I always wanted to go to Rosslare – largely just to see the ferry port, which I’d imagined in my head was massive – and was always told by my grandparents, who lived the closest, that it wouldn’t be possible to drive down there just to see a port…ever (although it was always perfectly possible to drive to Wexford itself just to do some shopping or whatever). And up until Friday, that was the only real knowledge I had of the place – a port, and not much else. Ireland is, according to the ads, an easy place to take a ‘break at home’ (although I think we all know that saying Donegal is ‘just 2 hours’ away from Dublin, as the ad claims, is being a little economical with the truth, unless you break every speed limit along the way) and our initial efforts at securing accommodation didn’t exactly back up this claim unfortunately. We found a perfect place online, went to go and book it, there was availability for the nights we were looking for – but then when we went to call them, it turned out that no, they didn’t actually have any availability. In fact, as it happens, they hadn’t gotten around to updating their website – great, good work. Surely if your business is accommodation, you can find your way to letting people know you’re full up? Or maybe I’m overlooking something. Anyway, we found a place, the Ferryport House (which had an incredibly funky looking restaurant attached to the front of it) on Friday and headed down straight away.

Here we have bustling Rosslare Harbour's 'village'...

First things first – even though Anna’s parents very kindly picked up the tab for the transport down there (and the accommodation too for that matter, owing to our combined poverty-like economic situation), it turns out you can’t ‘book online and save 10%’ with Bus Eireann if you happen to want to get on at any of the intermediate stops between Dublin city centre and Kilmacanogue. So, booking online as we would have done to get from the city centre would have cost €21.65 return – instead, even though we travelled a shorter distance and weren’t able to book online, it was €24. Might want to get that sorted – although, I should’ve known, I’ve been done over by their useless booking system before too when I booked online once and it turned out the ‘on hire’ coach couldn’t process the online tickets. Anyway, how long does it take to drive to Rosslare from Bray? 45 minutes? An hour and a half? Do I see two hours at the back of the class? Nope, with all the incredible padding in the timetable, the coach takes three hours to make the journey – including being stopped for the guts of 45 minutes in different places while we waited to pick up the schedule again, because of being so early. Anyway, three hours on and we speed into Rosslare at a rate of knots, and as we do, I see our guesthouse coming up rapidly on the right and leap out of the seat, as the driver pulls into the stop with such reckless abandon (now that we were no longer seemingly confined to that troublesome timetable) that both of us were nearly ejected out through the front window. The guesthouse was exactly as it looked on the website, including the funky restaurant out the front.

We walked and walked...and walked so far that we were a disastrous distance from the guesthouse...

A word about guesthouses if I may – I don’t normally appreciate them and I’ll explain why. When I was a kid, we stayed in a B&B in Ballyvaughan in Co. Clare that had these shanty wooden floorboards throughout the room. Late at night, I woke up and went to go and use the toilet, obviously stomping across the floor at the same time – so much so, that the owners downstairs actually took it upon themselves to bang on their roof (my floor), making much more noise than I ever could have wanted to make and confirming for me, at a young age, that Irish ‘hospitality’ was possibly non-existent. As a result, I prefer to stay in larger and more non-social hotels, where you don’t have to see the same people possibly ever again even if you’re staying for a while, or a hostel where you can always place the blame for some wrongdoing on whoever else happened to be sharing the room with you. Anyway, for the purpose of the trip to Rosslare, it seemed the only options really were guesthouses so along we went and to be honest, things have definitely improved since I last saw one – the place was very nice, friendly, and the room was exactly what I would have hoped for, bar the searing heat in our room that wasn’t really anyone’s fault and was remedied by lashing open the windows until they nearly came off their hinges as soon as we got in. That evening we took in a quick walk around Rosslare and found the ferry port within seconds of leaving the front door – and finally, I was able to tick that one off the ‘wanted to do as a child, but will have to be content with doing it as an adult’ list, and also put to rest my thought that it’d be ‘gigantic’ – Dublin Port, it definitely isn’t, so that’s that. With such tight economic constraints, the next morning meant that we both needed to absolutely pile in as much ‘complimentary breakfast’ as we could and I can assure you that I left with enough food inside me to feed about 10 families.

Lights out at Rosslare Harbour...

The rest of Rosslare definitely wouldn’t suit anyone looking for their ‘action-packed’ Irish break – it did however definitely suit someone who’s just finished college, cycled 200km the previous week, spent all the intervening time job hunting and trying to keep up with life in general, and just needed a break. There’s walks a-plenty if that’s your thing and the beach seemed to get better the further you walked from the port. The place itself seems to have definitely fallen foul of declining ferry traffic and had its fair share of shuttered places, not to mention the ferry port which could definitely do with being torn down and rebuilt to make more sense of things. I guess if we’d had rain all weekend, things could have got pretty miserable – but instead we’d the sun splitting down, so much in fact that I’ve returned looking like one of those drunken sunburnt tourists you sometimes see on ‘Holiday A&E’ or one of the many similar programs, wrapped up in bandages and burnt from head to toe. In fact, come Sunday, I was literally having to try and hop from shade to shade, trying to desperately avoid any further burnings, and yet failing miserably. By the time we hopped on the bus for the lengthy journey back to Dublin, I was becoming concerned that I’d have to somehow peel myself out of the seat at Loughlinstown to get off. Either way, it was exactly the break I needed – and even surprised me, after months of my slagging the Discover Ireland ads for the people at the start being in the water (who in their right mind, in Ireland, would head into the sea and find it as enjoyable as they seem to?) having so much fun, that it really can be a possibility on the rare occasions that we get sun.

And more importantly, it did wonders to cure my phobia of guesthouses…

A Whole New World of Pain…

Setting off for the Wicklow hills...

This year I, once again, took part in the Wicklow 200 cycle ‘challenge’, which covers 200 kilometres of spectacular Wicklow countryside, most of which you don’t notice as you struggle with every ounce of energy to just get round the course. I first did it back in 2008, and left from UCD, chatting with another cyclist all the way up into Stepaside and towards Enniskerry, where I had my first real experience of cycling in a pack – up the hill in Enniskerry, hoping that nobody towards the front would stall and thus take everyone down with them. Needless to say nobody did and we proceeded on, cycling for hours on end and not arriving back home until well into 7pm that evening; absolutely wrecked and unable to ascend stairs. In 2009, I was away on my round the world trip so doing the cycle wasn’t an option but for whatever reason, in the midst of growing college work, the thesis, trying to find a job, and a bunch of other stuff that constantly delays me from doing anything I actually enjoy doing, I decided to try it again this year and committed myself to significantly more ‘training’ ahead of the big day so that I’d not just finish, but also finish in something of a slightly more respectable time. And I started off well – got a good few cycles in to Howth, up and over Killiney and even around Enniskerry; but by no means anything that could possibly stand to me as ‘serious’ training. So, Sunday 13^th saw me standing, a bit cold, in my ‘cycling attire’ in Greystones for sign-on at around 7am. And off we went…

Climbing into the rain...

I’m by no means a serious cyclist – I commute, and very little else – and I don’t take a huge interest in the tactics or strategies of serious cyclists, but if there’s one thing I learnt from the last time, it’s that cycling in a group makes things seriously easier, faster and more pleasant. So leaving Greystones, I hopped in behind a bunch of people wearing ‘Emyvale Cycling Club’ tops and pretty much followed them all the way up until the turn for either the Wicklow 200 or 100; very generously, the organisers also provide a shorter course of 100 kilometres and what’s more, you don’t have to decide which one to do until an abrupt fork in the road somewhere not far from the sugar loaf. So, I made my turn for the 200 and begun the lengthier journey. Last time I did it, I distinctly remembered there being a long downhill section followed up shortly afterwards by an intensely painful and unwanted climb to begin the trek up the Sally Gap. Because I didn’t know the descent led to anything so excruciating so soon, I took it gently, happily trading safety over speed – only to be cursing that decision moments later. This time as we approached a serious bit of downhill, I let the bike take it at its own pace and so we began our descent, shaking and rattling like Big Thunder Mountain all the way. I was nothing short of having an on-ride photo taken along the way down! And, thankfully, the plan worked out nicely and I was carried up a generous portion of the initial climb for Sally Gap, which tired me out so much last time. In fact, the climb for Sally Gap actually seemed to have tamed in the intervening period and I definitely remember it being much worse – the only major downside to it this year was that I climbed near the peak, it began to absolutely spit rain, and a heavy fog descended that threatened to become a major safety problem.

After a 7km/h journey up the side of the mountain...

Because of the aforementioned rain and fog, even the downhill then afterwards wasn’t much use – I ended up more or less jumping on the brakes all the way down, trying to force my brakes to provide at least some stopping power in the lashings of rain. Probably because of that completely lacking downhill section, I ended up cycling extremely slowly through the next few townships and climbing the hills with very little speed – if anything, it became more a case of ticking them off the list, one by one. Finally, we pulled out onto some pock-marked road that’d probably be laughably considered a ‘primary road’, which I knew from past experience put me on the countdown to the first checkpoint of the day, Donard. The only times I’ve ever been in Donard in my life have always been on the bike and at this stage, I can safely say that I wouldn’t even have a clue how to find it in a more direct manner than the way the likes of the Wicklow 200 takes me. Last time I did the Wicklow 200, I took quite enjoyably long rest periods, which was actually not really a good idea – it made getting back on the bike all the more difficult – so this time, I elected to stop in Donard for no more than about 10 minutes, before continuing on with things. Moving on, things really picked up after the break and I was flying along at certain times, really making good speed, again passing through all these little villages and towns. Slieve Mann is undoubtedly one of, if not, the toughest climb of the day at around 460metres and I tried hard to remember how exactly we approached it last time, so I could try, like Sally Gap, to take something of a run at it. What happened however was not quite so graceful – as we descended down into the valley where the climb begins, I was nearly beginning the ascent again when I recognised the buildings and surround and suddenly started to pick up the pace in a frantic last-ditch effort at getting up the side of the mountain.

Getting ready to leave Rathdrum again for the final leg...

No doubt, this is where the training, if I’d done much, would have really come to shine; I literally cycled at no more than about 8km/h and because it was so slow, the hill just seemed to go on for an eternity. As I slowly progressed up the side of it, the road would start to bend in a new direction, but continue climbing regardless. It felt like I was trying to cycle up the side of the Alps on a bike. Not only that, but just like Sally Gap, as I neared the peak, it began to lash rain once again – déjà vu or what? And once again, because of the rain and an accident that’d happened about halfway down, speed was drastically reduced on the downhill, which then caused problems running into the next mountain, which followed immediately, since I hadn’t really had much of a run at it either. All in all, by the time I hit the next pit stop, Rathdrum, I felt just about ready to die. But, and this is the important point, I was ‘just about ready’, not completely ready, so after a brief stop, it was back onto the saddle (in the rain, of course) and onwards to Avoca, before coming across some extremely unwanted (at this late stage of the day) ascent that seemed to go on forever – although in hindsight, this had probably more to do with my fatigue, aches and pains that had already set in rather than the actual hill itself – before descending for Glenealy and Ashford. Finally, the route took us along to Newcastle and Kilcoole, before returning back to Greystones, where I thought my legs were going to come off!

I always seem to forget the incredible untold pain I suffer after these events when I’m signing up for them but will I go back for the 2011 event?

Ask me in January…

Another Weekend, Another Festival…

One of a small selection...

Last weekend, myself and Anna went along to Dublin’s ‘Soul Picnic’ at Merrion Square. In the meantime, I tried to get the guts of a thesis written, try and secure employment again and pack in as much cycling as possible in order to have even the remotest chance of completing this year’s Wicklow 200, next Sunday (a brief cycle up around Enniskerry during the course of the week confirmed my worst suspicions that indeed my failure to train adequately will more than likely lead to my knees literally melting on the day in question). But for another break from normality, we decided, since the city of Dublin seems to be having events like no tomorrow at the moment, to head along to Dublin’s Maritime Festival and see what we thought of that. I liked the whole idea put forward by the website – tall ships, outdoor market, and from what I could see in the pictures, lots of food. So, in we went. First up, we got into town and had to walk down pretty much as far as the CHQ building, which sort of serves as an informal starting point for the whole thing. The people behind Dublinbikes were obviously expecting some drunken revelry there at any rate since I notice they’d removed all the bikes from that station. Anyway, the first few stands were more or less full of knickknack items, slowly building up to a small stage, at which a bunch of musicians played literally all day. Next along was the increasingly-frequent German bratwurst stand, alongside which again was a stand selling Erdinger beer, or at least so I presume since everyone was floating around with Erdinger-branded plastic beer cups.

The infamous bin puppet...

Moving along, there was also a 3-branded ice cream van, which, in-keeping with the represented brand, was quite expensive and not really worth it. Over at the CHQ building meanwhile, there’s only one small revolving door through which about 200 people seemed to be trying to squish through in the one go, which wasn’t going entirely well. Then, beside that, on the little island in the middle of the dock that surprisingly hasn’t been responsible for any loss of life late at night after the German Oktoberfest, there was a kids fun fair of some sort, but to be honest, at this stage, I’m pretty confident I’d just get wedged in a helter-skelter if I chanced my arm with it, or else would end up toppling the whole thing at the top of the tower trying to get onto the slide, so we safely skipped over that whole part of the festival. Inexplicably and as pictured, there was also some puppet characters walking around talking to some sort of animal in a wheelie bin – I’m sure if I’d stayed a few moments longer it may have all made sense but I didn’t, and it doesn’t. Going across that bridge that shakes quite a bit in the wind – and it was windy, so we didn’t delay in our crossing of the bridge – we found plenty more food stands. There was one, that I was strongly tempted to buy from, that literally had a whole hog roasting on a spit within touching distance of customers. Then there was Dutch chip stands, Spanish paella stands, Italian nougat stands – I don’t know if the term maritime festival was anywhere near as appropriate as ‘world food festival’ may have been.

One of many stands full of goodies...

Carrying on, I eventually relented and bought another bratwurst, the second one in as many weeks – but if the stands will keep showing up every weekend…! In fact, the whole thing in terms of stands was great; there’s absolutely no way you could find yourself stuck for something to eat, buy or drink. In fact, it was actually the main selling point that was slightly more laborious to find – ships. There were a number of ships tied up alongside the quays but not really enough of them probably, considering the amount of people who wanted to be on one. Not only that, but the first couple were part of some wine group and you had to pay a couple of € to actually go onto the ship – even though, apparently, you then get a free glass of wine or two to go with it, which I didn’t want, I just wanted to have a look around the ship and get back off again. And because the first couple cost money, I then foolishly presumed that most of them probably would, which it turned out they didn’t – in actual fact, there were free boats, the only caveat was that everyone else seemed to know this too and because of that, there were large and lengthy queues just to get onto a tall-ship, have a look around, and get back off again. As a result, I didn’t manage to set foot on a boat during the whole day. The other thing was, seemingly Sea Safari’s and that red barge that ploughs up and down the Liffey were both doing some sort of special trips that day, with the day that was in it, but if they were they both kept it very quiet. I would’ve actually been quite interested in taking a trip on a Sea Safari if I’d come across them, but I didn’t, so that was that. Moving along, we finally made our way down to the end of the Southside quays, which terminated at the Irish navy boat, the LE Eithne. They had also very generously elected not to charge for entrance and needless to say, the result was one more giant queue.

The 'main' stage, as it were...

Finally, we headed back up the quays again, crossing over the new Samuel Beckett Bridge to get back to the Northside and carry on back up towards the CHQ past all the stands we’d missed on that side earlier. Overall, it was a really great event – barring my impatience and subsequent inability to get on a boat, and the layout of the event which meant the Northside part of the event begun nearly in town and lasted down as far as the Beckett Bridge, while the Southside part went from opposite the CHQ building down as far as opposite the O2. That said though, considering I stood in Frankfurt pretty much this time last year and bemoaned the fact that compared to their near-daily food markets that seemed to crop up overnight throughout the city, we had nothing, I’m pretty impressed – I’m guessing I’ve obviously had my head in the sand for years or else all this stuff isn’t being advertised enough (not many other people I’ve talked to since even knew it was on), but as free things to do over the weekend go, it doesn’t get a whole lot better. And, given everyone’s supposed lack of money at the moment, I’m guessing everyone else thinks so too given the crowds. Now, if only I could’ve been bothered to wait to get on a boat…

Working Abroad & Soul Picnics…

First up, let me apologise for the continued delay in posting anything interesting or updating the site/Twitter/Facebook – it’s a sure sign that I’ve got something far more pressing to do, and at this time of the year, it can only mean that after 5 years of college, I’m now faced with the prospect of condensing the writing of a thesis into one week. Aside from that, I’m also doing more cycling than ever, trying to find a job and just having finished final exams – it’s been pretty much all-go! So, things might not get much better for the next week, but I promise then things will get back to normal.

Afraid I won't be going anywhere soon though...

So, over the weekend, knowing of my desperation to escape, I was informed by someone close that there was to be a ‘Working Abroad’ exhibition at the RDS for those wishing to make good an escape from Ireland and find somewhere that’s not dripping in recession. Needless to say, I had in my mind, an RDS hall literally packed to the rafters with stands offering work abroad, jobs, moving services, that sort of thing. Maybe even flights so you could literally go in one end, pick up a job, arrange a visa, arrange to have everything moved and then at the end of this imaginary conveyor belt, organise and book your flights. I even took Anna along I was so excited by the whole thing. However, in actual fact, I can tell you enough about it by just saying that there were so few stands that first of all, you had to actually queue up to talk to anyone at any of the stands and that secondly, most of the stands there I didn’t really see the full need for. For example (and it tells you something about the place that I can actually name the stands one by one), there was VHI who aside from sorting out Margaret from the commercial, when she got the skits in Kenya, I don’t know what they can do to help if you actually move abroad, and not just go on holiday. Not only that, but they weren’t especially interested either and Anna actually asked me to go and just ask them anything to do with my policy just to cheer them up. Then there was some sort of currency exchange stand ‘Halo Financial’ that promised better rates than the banks – had I, like I’d hoped for, been able to sort everything in my imaginary world of make-believe, then this would have been perfect about second place from the end of the imaginary conveyor.

Within the opening hours...

As such though, it wasn’t much use and they weren’t excessively well patronised. Next along was some stand about moving to Adelaide, which seemed very specific given how they were really the only stand there pushing a particular place – that said, there was a seminar later on, on South Australia from the same person, which was pretty cool. The immigration lawyers and specialists though, who numbered about 4, were literally swamped all day long and since there tended to be only one of them on the desk at any time, they literally had no chance of getting even so much as a trip to the toilet. Overall though, the number of stands was hardly worth the €10 entrance fee, not to mention the having to wait to actually talk to people – like, realistically, most of the information I got could have been derived from the internet and without waiting. Hmm…so we won’t be doing that again. Following on from that, we headed on into Merrion Square to have a look at Dublin’s supposed ‘soul picnic’. The first thing, aside from all the artwork hanging up on the fence on the outside of the square that was noticeable, was that the whole concept of being able to drink in picnic had been ‘soulfully’ embraced by the local scumbag population and as I passed by, someone in a Hiace joyfully jumped out screaming and waving a can of Budweiser vaguely in my direction. In spite of the lack of admission charge, I suspected I was very shortly going to be donating some funds regardless by way of my wallet being nicked.

Revellers enjoy the sun...

The actual event itself though was quite a lot of fun – we went in and in the largest part of the square, there was a stage, along with literally loads of people sitting around enjoying the music. So, to begin with, I got a ‘hot dog’ (a bit steep at €5 though I’d have to say), we slowly moved around trying to find a space, before giving up and going to a quieter part of the park and having a lie down. We returned later on, to have a diabetes-inducing crepe from the stand back near the stage (again, €5, it was obviously the price of choice for the day) and moving along out of Merrion Square. While we were back getting the crepe’s, whoever was on the main stage, who I think was more than likely being largely ignored, since everyone else was mostly chatting among themselves, mentioned that the event very nearly never happened owing to the city council pulling funding on the event. Now, like I say, it was a lot of fun and these are the kind of things the city really should be laying on (or someone should be) so we can all try and have a decent enough time as we struggle on through the recession, but – surely, when swimming pools are being closed because the council appears to have so little money in the coffers, asking for them to provide funding for a stage and a bunch of artists (the park itself is always there so it’s not like that needed to be paid for so much) is a little bit ridiculous – it got me wondering would they not try instead to secure some funding perhaps from a company who might be in some way connected with music or putting on events. Or better still, considering the cost (a uniform €5) for all the food I’d been eating at the event, was there no way these vendors could be charged a percentage of the takings or a flat fee for setting up shop there in the first place? Or is it just a simple fact that companies won’t donate or sponsor anything these days?

In the meantime, I’ll get back to my thesis and hopefully be able to get the blog back slightly more to normal in the coming days…

Cinema’s New Toy…

What is this rubbish?

When I was a kid, Kellogg’s would occasionally (or maybe it was just once) bring out these educational books and you could use a pair of glasses with a green and red lens to see the pictures inside in 3D. What’s worth noting is that, even at the time this ‘development’ was made, 3D wasn’t new – if it was, I’m sure the free glasses wouldn’t have been free and wouldn’t have been appearing in packs of Kellogg’s cereal boxes – and it wasn’t really, despite the supposed intention, much use. Pictures sort of seemed to leap a little off the pages but along with them came green and red-tainted edges, a sort of hazy blur – and all for a picture to just seem to be hovering over its page. A pop-up book would have had roughly the same effect. Then, when the IMAX cinema was in Dublin for an extremely brief stint before it went bust, I got an experience of 3D again, this time in the form of watching lightning bolts coming flying at me on a screen the apparent size of a number of double-decker buses. To be honest, when you’re only 12 years old and everywhere you look all you can see is lightning bolts coming flying towards your seat, the experience was more scary than anything else. So, to date, that pretty much sums up my experience with 3D. My experience with movie theatres has, in general, been equally unsatisfactory.

And here we have another thing I don't like about cinemas, rip-off sweet shops...

There are two cinemas relatively close to my house and here’s a brief summary of them (and anyone living within a couple of kilometres’ radius of Shankill should be able to take a guess as to the cinemas being referred to); the first cinema, much older but done up some years ago, assigns seating which I don’t appreciate, can vary between showing the film in a large, open theatre and a room not much bigger than my living room. Also, the heating always seems to be set at a level adequate for the staff, only wearing shirts, to maintain warmth. In winter, that means you end up using up another seat in the place to, as quickly as you can, remove your coat, scarf, jumper and pretty much everything else other than a t-shirt and jeans. The second cinema, which is newer and far more popular, tends to be filled with bratty, extra-loud teenagers who go in to discuss the latest affairs from Junior Wesley the previous evening or make a couple of important texts that for whatever reason, weren’t possible to be sent from home. There must be some exceptional deal going on for senior citizen’s in the place on the nights I ever visit as well, because without fail, there seems to be an increasing number of wrinkled ramblers coming in 15 – 20 minutes late with every visit. So, as a result, it’s safe to say that I do my utmost to avoid trips to the cinema whenever I can, unless there’s something truly magical showing that I simply cannot wait to see on DVD. Lately however, there’s been another addition to put me off visiting the cinema. 3D films.

An excuse to charge more apparently...

No doubt piracy, illegal downloading and the insatiable need to make more money is responsible for this sudden crazy by the movie companies. But if I may address each concern one by one; firstly, the original films are nearly all still able to be downloaded for free from the internet if one so desires. Secondly, with 3D films now getting more and more of a mention than ever before, it’s literally only a matter of time before someone comes up with some sort of workaround so we can all download illegal 3D films and watch them as they’re intended to be watched – nothing is ever safe from piracy long-term. Think about pretty much every media you can – tape, CD, DVD, video, the list could go on. As it stands, there’s an incredibly easy way to copy each and every one of them. What makes 3D any worse? Give it a few years and it’ll be the exact same and the movie companies’ will be having to go back to the drawing board and think up something else. The second thing, in my case anyway, is that quite simply they won’t be making any more money off me. The first film I saw recently in 3D, I can’t remember what it is, was pretty cool, semi-realistic and not an altogether complete waste of money. The second film I saw in 3D though, was tripe, of what seemed about the same quality as the Kellogg’s 3D book alluded to earlier. Then, on my third effort to see a 3D film, I was told after I’d paid for my ticket that I now needed to actually buy the glasses – how stupid is that? You can hardly go to a 3D film without having 3D glasses! I presume they’re working on the ‘swimming hat principal’, in so far as people will buy it, remember it a couple of times and then inexplicably lose the set they have and have to buy a new pair. Anyway, after those unsuccessful efforts, I’ve decided it’s simply not worth the hassle and added expense and have gladly reverted back to 2D films only. If there’s not going to be a set standard for ‘good’ 3D films and then ‘bad’ 3D films like my second visit, then I’m not going to leave it to chance and pay extra for what could turn out to be a nauseating, headache-inducing 2 hours.

Tell you what, you make 3D and I'll watch 2D...

Surely anyway there’s absolutely nothing new about 3D whatsoever? Sure the glasses aren’t tinted red and green like they used to be (incidentally, they’re also a lot clunkier than the older versions) but it’s pretty much the same concept – wear these glasses and things appear to be coming towards you. Apparently, from what I’ve read, a lot of the big studios are pinning their hopes on widespread adoption and love of 3D films, but to be honest, it seems like a poorly-calculated move. For example, I might go and see a 3D film now or in the next while, but that doesn’t mean I’d want necessarily to see another one, or every film like that – 3D’s got a novelty value, I’ll give it that, but what else? All this talk of 3D not just being for cinema but also for TV just seems to be complete nonsense for anyone living in the normal world and not just using it as a gimmick for some sort of special programme. Can you really imagine, for example, sitting in your house on a Friday evening watching The Late Late with a pair of chunky 3D glasses on? Not a chance – it seems to me that having pinned their hopes so much on 3D, nobody’s stepped back to think for a few minutes if it really is as popular as it seems to be, or whether people really would be willing to watch something in 3D for more than 2 hours, or even watch more than a couple of films in 3D in the first place? Either way, I know for a fact, especially since I’ve lost my 3D glasses that I was forced to buy, that I won’t be seeing another film in 3D for a long, long time…