Life is riddled with a procession of minor impediments

[JohnW]

For any Irish Squaxx, or those visiting the Emerald Isle, I would heartily recommend a visit to the best little comic shop in the world.

But it's in Dublin!
The last time I went to Dublin – I'm not kidding – they asked for my passport.
(Alright, this might not have been the last time, but it was back in the days when you could fly from Cork cheaper than taking the train.)
'Passport,' said the man at Security.
'But I just got off the plane from Cork,' I said.
'Passport,' he repeated.
'I am a citizen of the Irish Republic,' said I, with a touch of hauteur.
'Speak fookin Engish,' said he.
(Alright, I'm making up a lot of that, but the point is that I never feel very welcome in Dublin, and it's a bloody long way away.)

[The Legendary Shark]

I don't even have a bank account. It makes life so much simpler. Duller, sure, and devoid of tranklements, but definitely simpler.

[JohnW]

I had to look up 'tranklement' to see if it's a real word.
I'm glad that it is.

[The Legendary Shark]

My old Granny used the word all the time (as in, "oh bollocks - I've dropped me teeth into me tranklements drawer,") and I guess it stuck with me.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Ah yeah, Sub City are sound - since my switch to digital, though, I'm not half as familiar with the place as I used to be.  IIRC, the main man there was Rob Curley, who was an indie-press script droid in his own right.

I generally used to try to buy my paper prog in one of the few newsagents that still stocked it, however.  My thinking was that I could singlehandedly turn back the clocks and convince newsagents that selling comics was a good idea.  Ah, the ideals of youth. 

Truth is, if 2000ad was as scarce in the shops when I was a kid as it later became, I never would have found it in my small Irish town and would be a nonscrot to this day.

[The Legendary Shark]

At around 7 o'clock this morning, a delivery van coming up our drive half fell into a ditch, blocking the drive for around four hours until a tow truck arrived. All for a parcel no bigger than a packet of cigarettes. Which should have been delivered next door anyway. That's a bad day - when you have to ring up your boss and not only tell him that you've driven into a ditch but also that you've driven into the wrong ditch.

[Hawkmumbler]

Now now, that's hardly fare, Sharko.

He was driving into all the right ditches. Just not necessarily, in the right order.

[The Legendary Shark]

:-D

[The Legendary Shark]

Hrrgh. Starting at 05:30hrs when I noticed the oldest dog had vanished* into the night, leaving a mess in his bed, and spent nearly two endarkened hours scouring the farm and the ditches along the side of the road out front without success, and then being shouted at for not having time to do something that wasn't my responsibility anyway, and then being saddled with tasks that'll delay my own tasks, today has been one of those that try men's souls. And it's only lunchtime. Hrrgh.

*Zippy, the old dog (whose mind seems to be going, sadly) was rescued from the road out front by a local lorry driver and taken to their local depot, from where I later picked him up a bit confused but none the worse for wear. Zippy was fine, though.

[paddykafka]

Well, at least Zippy was found okay. Which I imagine is the most important and good thing to take from the day? And puts everything else into perspective, perhaps? (When it's yourself that is found wandering the roads and in need of being rescued, well, that will be another matter, altogether.  )

[The Legendary Shark]

Ah, Zippy had a high old time being stuffed full of biscuits by cooing mechanics in a tropically warm workshop. I was the one freezing cold and worried sick for three hours. Still, you're right, all's well that ends well and I managed to get through the day without having to pull my own beard off - so yeah, all-in-all I'm taking the win.

[paddykafka]

MUGGED BY A SEAGULL!

So there I was, late Saturday afternoon in St Stephen's Green, Dublin and I had decided to take a break from the hustle and bustle of life and have my afternoon snack ( a Veggie falafel from Dealz, if you must know). I had just taken out said snack from my bag, and before my arse had even made contact with the bench I was  suddenly dive-bombed by a Seagull! (At least with Stukas you had some sort of advance warning. This particular flying git came out of nowhere like some sort of stealth bomber!)

It promptly bit off half of the falafel and flew off. But instead of having the decency to make good its escape, the bloody creature whirled about, landed about ten feet away from me on the path, and proceeded to mock me by guzzling away on my feckin' lunch!

Well, if the air had not already been blue from the cold, it certainly was after the torrent of abuse and curses that I hurled at the aforementioned avian terrorist. I can safely assure you all, that my questioning as to the legitimacy of it's birth was on a minor scale, compared to the other oaths which I uttered towards it.

One of the barmen in Grogan's pub, to whom I later related my sorry tale of ambush and woe - I was in a state of shock and needed some calming down in the form of a pint - reckoned that one of the reasons for these bird attacks, is the depletion of fish stocks in the seas off the coastline of the Emerald Isle.

And he may well be right.

But if, at some future point, Stephen's Green is indeed reduced to fifteen blades of grass and a bush called "Kevin" - as predicted in the Garth Ennis scripted Dredd story "Emerald Isle" - my guess is that said devastation will not be the result of nuclear fallout. Rather, it will be from the tragic, and environmentally disastrous aftermath, of irate citizens going mad from having their lunch nicked and rampaging through the park on a wild and frenzied Gull cull.

[JohnW]

Seagulls are beyond decency. This is not adequately appreciated by one or more locals where I live. These misguided malcontents actually go out of their way to feed seagulls. This can make walking by the quays unnerving. One moment it's just some clown shaking out a bag of bread crusts, the next -- SEAGULL STORM!

[lincnash]

hahaha :-)

MUGGED BY A SEAGULL!......

At least with Stukas you had some sort of advance warning. This particular flying git came out of nowhere like some sort of stealth bomber!

Keeping with the WWII analogy your pesky seagull reminded me of the RAAF Bristol Beaufighter.
"The Japanese paddykafka nicknamed this plane seagull 'Whispering Death' due to the speed at which it could suddenly appear, strike and disappear,"

https://acesflyinghigh.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/raaf-bristol-beaufighter-whispering-death/

Chippies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfIRHREMgm4
;-)

[JohnW]

Not a mugging but certainly a menacing: I was ganged up on by an ever-increasing number of crows in a public park in Brussels a few weeks back. Belgian crows have nothing on Irish seagulls, but there were a lot of the bastards and they were on their own turf. Shameful to admit, but I took myself and my sandwich elsewhere at speed.