...wtf...

how can this straggly-haired, weirdly-gummed, cardigan wearin bastid get on TV and i can't?!



he looks like a horse for feck sake...

the haunting of dree hill

i recently played a gig in King's Bar in Finnis, just outside Dromara in County Down, and was intrigued by the local tales of a haunted tree stump opposite the bar.

shown here a few years ago, the story goes that in the early 1900s a troublesome spirit haunted the area around the Dree Hill Road bridge, which crosses the upper reaches of the Lagan. after many of his parishioners became fearful of the ghost, the village priest decided to perform an exorcism, details of which still exist in the church records

the priest managed to capture the spirit in a bottle and, wary of removing it from the place where it was bound, hid the bottle in a nearby sycamore tree.
the area became free from the hauntings, but the locals remained very apprehensive about the bridge and the tree's ghostly secret- when power lines were being brought through the village, the tree was to be removed as it stood in the way of progress. the workers however were instructed not to touch it, and the cables had to be run between the tree's upper branches.

the tree died years later of an apparent lightning strike, but still remained untouched for quite some time despite being no more than a hollow shell. in late july 2009 however, the tree was felled after taking substantial damage from a recent storm-

http://drewmcwilliams.blogspot.com/

a good many bottles were recovered during the process but all were removed, as most of them were believed to have been put there by local patrons leaving the pub a little worse for wear. one of them may have been the bottle containing the spirit however, and there is now a worry that the hauntings may return to the bridge.

in the torrential floods of mid-august 2009 the Dree Hill Road bridge, along with most of the rest of the country, was submerged underwater-

belfast westlink

in spite of the raging torrents taking their toll on the wall of the bridge and even pulling the tarmac off the road, the tree stump still remains...

was the spirit protecting the last remnants of it's resting place?

youtube killed the video star...

heehee i just got my request read out on Cool FM :D the DJ went nuts over the song! and rightly so my friends, rightly so...





ABSOLUTE CLASSIC. i saw them live in the waterfront... simply epic.

body mod update

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell my delicious missus

has decreed that i'm not allowed any more tattoos until the sproglet is born. although i reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally want one like right now, it gives me time to plan the sleeve i'm workin on and get some designs drawn up.

i'd quite like somethin like this angel-

for down my tricep, and this card-

for the inside of my forearm... they'll need to be positioned around the stars that i already have winding from my shoulder to my wrist, but i reckon it's doable.

Nikki and i are both getting the playing card, as it has our son / daughter's initial and date of birth on it :)

I also got my ears up to a 4mm, yey! it was pretty tight though, i'm gonna have to leave this one in for about a month i think. i'm gonna go to 6mm and see what that looks like... or maybe 8... or 10...

current tunage: buckcherry - ridin

i'll see your entendre, and i'll double it...

yes, i am serious... and yes, i am an old man. i listen to Terry Wogan in the mornings. because he does stuff like this-

i thought i would have a go at my own little "janet and john" story... here we go-

Janet has lost John in the supermarket. See him frolic through the pharmacy section like a big grinning eejit. He‘s spotted Mrs Malone, John likes her. She‘s good with her hands.

“Hello Mrs Malone!” John squeals, “What are you working on today?!”

Mrs Malone looks a tad distressed. “I’m fitting a set of patio doors, John. One half is fine, but the other half just won’t hang properly and I keep slamming it shut. I tried altering it myself but all I could find was a very sharp axe and I ended up giving myself a rather nasty cut on the arm. I really need to get someone to have a look at it right away.”

Just then Miss Smith comes past and speaks up- “Not to worry Mrs Malone, I’m a nurse. I have some bandages in my bag that I can strap you up with. John, could you look after my groceries please?”

See John hunt through the tasty treats in Miss Smith’s grocery bag, scampering off and tucking in.

But oh no, he hasn’t noticed the spillage on the floor… John’s feet go from under him, and he lands with a thud in the rear aisle of the shop.

Janet comes around the corner and finally finds John, wearing most of Miss Smith‘s shopping. “What ever are you doing?!”

See the smile on John’s face.

“Mrs Malone was just telling me about banging her other half that isn’t very well hung, and her axe-wound seriously needed seeing to. Then Miss Smith sorted her out with a strap-on while I slipped up the back passage!”

See the perfectly finger-shaped welts rise on John’s cheek...

wage slave

i've got 20 minutes of my lunchbreak left and I'm in a bit of a "couldn't be assed" mood, so i can't really be assed doing anything... so i thought i'd write a few words to kill a bita time. RIP time, i knew him so well...

so yea, at the minute i'm readin (if i could be assed...) this-

recommended to me by a very good friend, he promised great things. for the first sizable chunk of the book however, it did not deliver. the scene-setting mechanisms and just the feel of the book in general was such that i couldn't engage with it at all, and had it not been held in such high regard by it's previous owner, i would definitely have shelved it. but i stuck, and i'm definitely glad i did.

first published in 1972, and written as an autobiography (which is isn't) it has aged amazingly well. the plot is simply about a man, (the author supposedly,) a bored phychiatrist, who lets the roll of the dice decide every decision in his life. and that's about it really... the novel records all the excitement and the boredom that stems from his adventures into "diceliving," with plenty of dark humour, shocks, twists and turns thrown in. definitely worth a look, it's on sale in HMV for a whole 3 quid.

ramble on

i was hokin through my old hard drive the other day and i came on some quality random old photos that i thought i would post, just for the craic :)

myself and robert plant from Led Zeppelin at stansted train station :) wow...

what a weapon! i want this...

hedgeasaurus rex

the napkins myself and maxwell were given on a freightliner ferry to haysham... were they tryin to tell us somethin?!

i was rubbing the wall with a damp sponge to strip the wallpaper, and when i stepped back this freeky face had appeared... can you see him?! :S

current tuneage: led zeppelin - kashmir

around the world in 80 daze

although far from professional, i do like taking a picture or 2 when i'm on my travels. i mostly just use my phone which, despite its 8mp camera, isn't really the highest quality, but it does for me and it's always close at hand. thought i'd stick up a few pics that i've captured over the past wee while.

a candle in a bathroom in queens

castle leslie - monaghan

an albino bluebell (whitebell?) in the field behind my house

the view from my house in the snow

newcastle from halfway up slieve donard

belfast city hall on st patrick's day

the sun setting over spa lake in ballynahinch

somewhere in dublin

somewhere else in dublin

my car, at my granny's house

current tunage: velvet revolver - slither

hotel suitehearts

Nikki and i had a little night away at Madison's hotel last night, so i am blogging to you now from within our executive room... rock and roll. the TV will be liberating itself via the window.
for £128 you get your evening meal, (which was top class, very prompt service and great food. and Nikki fancied the waiter,) your room for the night (with a super king-size bed but postage-stamp size TV) and a massive breakfast brought right to your bed the next morning by the pretty blonde room service. she didn't want to join Nikki under the covers though.

current tunage: john mayer - free fallin

vinyl hawtness

my signed buckcherry CD came this morning, yeys :D it'll be going on the wall beside my signed john mayall ticket-

the postie also brought the jamiroquai LP i'd been looking for for aaaaaaaaaaages, which completes my set of their limited edition vinyl re-issues :)

in case you didn't know already, i'm into vinyl records in a big way. i've only got about 100 but i want to have shelves and shelves of them one day, like in that scene in Almost Famous at the radio station... yum... but i do have a few in my collection that i'm not so proud of. (mostly Jim Reeves albums inherited from my parents.) i have managed to find a use for them however, as little sculptures and fruit bowls-

tight :) all you gotta do is set them on an upturned cup or bowl and stick them in the oven for a little while. they go all gooey like and you can mould them into different kindsa shapes. Try it yourself, a vinyl record art attack :)

current tunage: little richard - good golly miss molly

currently awesome TV

what's with the freeview TV these days bein so freekin good?

True Blood, wednesdays at 10pm on channel4. vampire show based on some books by some chick... more tits, swearing and biting than a night in with Katie Price. but in a good way.

FlashForward, mondays at 9pm on channel5. everyone in the world passes out for 2 minutes, 17 seconds and all experience "memories" of the same moment in time 6 months in the future...

UFC Ultimate Fighter, saturdays at 11pm on fiveUSA. cage fighting reality show. kinda. epicness.

anything i've forgotten or missed?

current tunage: nothin, the TV's on...

ear gaugery

seeing as my lovely missus has her lugholes stretched with 10mm tunnels in them, she had a load of plugs and spikes of all kinds of sizes lyin about not getting used. i thought i would give them a home.

I'm up to 3.2mm at the minute, doesn't look like much but i'm getting there...

current tunage: audioslave - show me how to live

bloggin and stuff

okay, i've been threatening to do this for ages and i finally got my ass into gear... i still have no idea what i'm going to write about but sure we'll just start ramblin' about cool shit that's going on and see what comes out :) stream-of-consciousness writing and all that.

so yea, i got one of those HMV reward cards a while back... instead of being just another "spend your cash, get your points, we send you vouchers" kinda card, you use your points to buy one-off or limited edition stuff off the HMV website. Yesterday I cashed in my hard-earned pointage in exchange for a SIGNED BUCKCHERRY CD....

oooh baby.... i wuda preferred vinyl (that's just the kinda prick i am) but hey, i'm a whore for signed merch. and buckcherry are effing awesome-

current tunage: buckcherry - crazy bitch