I remember the Smithfield Horse show with less than fondness. Once a month we'd be woken on Sunday mornings to the noise of hundreds of horses out in the square below our apartment. And then all the crap (literally) left over after they went. I really liked living there but it was always such a crazy situation to have this in the middle of a huge apartment complex and two hotels. So it was a little embarrassing to hear about the recent shooting there during the Horse market and not the kind of thing I want to show my wife to persuade her to visit her old home again. As is fitting for a classy newspaper like the Dail Mail, they labelled it a "Big fat gypsy shoot-out". It was of course on the local news. I think I'll skip mentioning it to the guys at work.

In an unprecedented move of Australo-philia it seems that they're going to introduce that slightly more modest drinking vessel, the Schooner, into British pubs. I kind of liked them when I first arrived here because it let you get away with ordering less than a pint without ending up with one of those skinny curved glasses that back home would have been laughed at. But I thought the original reason for having them here was to make sure beer was never lingering in a glass long enough to get warm. There's absolutely no chance of that happening in the UK these days. link

Seeing how there's a tenuous Aussie connection, I just have to mention this story from last week where a wallaby of all things was taken out at a disco party in a hotel in Dublin last week and died as a result of ingesting ecstacy and alcohol. Obviously the deep, deep recession hasn't knocked any sense into some people back there.

Out of the following three headlines, guess which one is real: Blackberry ban in Gulf States averted with agreement to distribute "Blackberry burqas" Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts Budget Cuts Force British Government To Shut Down Mysterious Seaside Village It would have been too easy if I'd replaced the last one with a headline that started off "Area man.." The real headline via mefi

Another article in an international newspaper popped up featuring Ireland's economic woes the other day - this time in the LA Times. They nicely fitted it in with the delay/cancellation of the U2 tower in Dublin (design below). I guess it was a fitting symbol of the hubris of the past few years.. From the same source mentioning the LA Times article, someone suggested googling "next iceland". Of course Ireland showed up in the top results many times.

Worst bush fires in Australian history these past couple of days in Victoria. I was never able to appreciate the speed at which they spread but having seen on tv the gale force winds I can well imagine how the flames can jump huge distances. It's also pretty amazing that a lot of the fires were set deliberately.

"AN Irish backpacker armed with a pet fish in a container tried to rob a Brisbane ticketing agency saying he needed the money to feed the fish, a court heard." "..O'Flynn was jailed for 12 months but released immediately on the condition he return to Ireland at the weekend." Good grief. link via arbroath