Gummy, 5000, nostalgia in action, 5000 seems so long ago now.
I enjoyed that video Gummy, great the way the chap in the wheelchair makes the best of his situation, good sport as they say. 
“The Auld Triangle” was featured in Behan’s play “The Quare Fella”, set in Mountjoy Prison just down the road from me, the Royal canal flows by it and many’s the swim I had there as a boy. The play was based on the true story of a young man about to be hanged for murder, there was a Rank film made of it back in the 1950’s.
Behan was loved in his native Dublin, but the drink got the better of him in the end and he’d end up being thrown out of pubs in the city, he was a very generous fella and fame didn’t sit well with him, he loved nothing more than the company of the ordinary drinking classes, his people as he called them, pity he was only 41 when he died, but he’s not missing much, there are not many ‘Characters’ in todays smoke free and almost people free plastic pubs.
A couple of his Quotes.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
I am a drinker with writing problems.
A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
I’m inclined to believe the last quote, when a woman actually listens to a man he’s taken aback, she must be an angel from heaven so it’s very possible he will fall head over heels for her.;-)
surely there are only two true and tested reasons
- how big is his bank balance
- how big is his pecka dillo??
any man who thinks its his charisma is doomed! right spittie??
Depends, if Charisma has a “Used by Date” life.
well mine’s still goinn 50 yrs on - why only this morn I said to my wife “darling can you please pass me the “charisma” you know how I love to sprinkle it on me cornflakes” - 'certainly dear she said I do love the way it makes you all ‘corny’ oops sorry ‘horny’!!
Try some “Frosties” they’re Grrrrrrrrrreat.
Thinking of characters, for a multitude of reasons society does not seem to allow or want them anymore.
Dublin also had Thomas Dudley better known as Bang Bang. For years Bang Bang had been one of the best known characters on the streets of Dublin. He was born in 1906, a birth year he shared with his great hero, John Wayne. He would descend on bus and tram passengers in Dublin, point a large brass church door key, his “Colt .45” at them and shout “bang bang” in the style of the cowboy films.
You would have a job explaining the innocence of this to following generation that we as kids did exactly the same after watching a western at the flea pit
Apropos of absolutely nowt…I’ve just been watching a Tim Vine DVD.
Whether one is an admirer or not,one has to admit-that man REALLY can bang out the one-liners…and most of them are amusing,original-and daft.
All-in-all,an hour most pleasantly spent. ‘Espresso & chuckles’.
[makes a most welcome change from the abominable “Netflix & Chill”]
Tim Vine always reminds me of Tommy Cooper who was a comic genius at delivering the daft obvious. Like TC Tim Vine makes telling those one liners look easy. He is also a rare clean comic. Simple, effective and so nice to have a bit of silliness .
Ah poor old Bang bang the lord be good to him. a harmless oul devil, they still talk about him to this day. I think most towns and villages everywhere had their own characters, Mad Mary’s and Johnny Forty Coats were a plenty.
Dubliners were forever putting nick names on people and national monuments/institutions. Anna Livia in the fountain in O’Connell St. was ‘The whore in the sewer’ the statue of Joyce leaning on his cane became ‘The p…k with the stick’ and so on, people who drank in the house and not the pub were ‘Silent pints’.
Twenty years ago all the postal workers were moved from the city centre out to a brand new building way outside the city, most of the lads in the post office liked a pint at breaks and after work but there wasn’t a pub for miles of the new place, they christened the new building ‘The Betty Ford Clinic’
We didn’t have a public crematorium here until the 1970’s, something to do with catholics not allowed cremation and the church objecting to it, I vaguely remember the chap who campaigned for one for years, forget his real name now, but he was nicknamed ‘Starve the maggots’
Bang bang is long gone but sadly today there are too many real shootings in the city with the drug gangs bumping off each other. 
Dominic Behan, Brendan’s brother wasn’t a bad songwriter Gummy, he wrote ‘Liverpool Lou’ you should know that one.
Pints ain’t about the taste, in the early years it’s about Dutch Courage, in the later years it’s about Mindbending, then there are those who use a few pints to loosen the tongue.
Who remembers Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders?
I know of them.
Not personally.
ya know for years I thought that Liverpool Lou was a guy cause I had an Uncle Lou d’ya see - and whenever whoever was singin got to the line “why don’t you behave, love, like the other girls do?” I was always very confused until me mate who was as tick as I was then said - well he’s a big girls blouse ain’t he now?
took me years to work that one out!! but da one that used to break me heart up was “the leavin of Liverpool” and I did just after the 11 plus!
but strangely enough I was doing a walk around the old neighbourhoods or tryin to on google earth and ya know they’ve turned it into a beautiful inner city and I would be happy to live there for a while now. all my old streets have gone of course but they were mangy really and needed to! I even joined the church restoration body and will try to send them a few bricks each year??
talkin aboot churches as I was there are now four major high church Anglicans who have united for safety and become the Parish of all saints - the one my parents married in is still standing but was deconsecrated and left to rot by the church authorities [ heavenly brownie points lost there] but has now be restored to high quality dorms for the university students - my goodness and all these four congregations have chummed up and started helping each other - great to see progress eh?
I also see that there is of course a selection of deconsecrated churches for sale all over the place - talk about gettin a foot in the door!!
Some things are best left in the past, I never reciprocated when my Ex-communicated.
I have to say that the standard of grammar, spelling & punctuation has improved enormously in this little, but influential, sector of Over50s Forum.
I exclude myself from this Statement for the simple reason that I am old & feeble . It’s pot luck where my fingers land once the old Dopamine is unleashed at about 11AM
Well done this group, you are inspirational.
Drugs and aging affect us all in one way or another but so longs as we can still see to hit those keys and tell us about it that is all that matters, along with a sense of humour.
For example Grandad can’t find his phone. It rings, but it’s not in his pockets, or his car. When he walks away you can’t hear the ringing so it must be on him somewhere.
I am not quite as bad as this yet but getting there 
I am convinced that there is an international gang of mischiefs who go around moving and hiding things. Your 'phone, your keys, your wallet, and your marbles being the most targeted items to be hid.
Many is the time I’ve lost something, knowing that it can’t be far away, and often within arms reach of me. The most famous of these from my perspective was when I lost a particular spaniard. (You know, one of those things for doing up nuts and bolts.)
I was replacing the clutch on a car of mine. Lying on my back underneath it I put a ring spaniard down. It was a nice spaniard, one of a set I got with a bunch of green shield stamps, but when I went to pick it up, there it was gone. I hadn’t moved from under the car since using it only a minute before, but it was nowhere to be seen. My toolbox was out of reach so it couldn’t be there, it wasn’t in a pocket, I wasn’t lying on it, but it was completely out of site.
I got out from underneath and had a good look all round the car, under it, under the darkest shadows cast by the tyres, in my pockets again, my shoes, the creases of my clothes, but not a hint of the shiny chrome vanadium double ended ring spaniard was to be seen.
I took my jumper off and shook it. I jumped up and down. I went round the car twice more, but all to no avail.
Eventually I finished the job using a different spaniard all together.
Six weeks later I had cause to lift the bonnet to check something, looked down, and there was my lonely spaniard sat on top of a chassis rail, despite me having driven hundreds of miles since loosing the aforesaid tool. Whilst lying underneath he car, a naughty sprite or goblin or member of the fabled international gang of mischiefs must have picked it up and placed it atop the chassis. Oh what a jolly jape they must have thought of that.
They are still at it to this day, causing mayhem and assaulting my sanity by moving all sorts of small items.
Fruity, was it a metric or imperial Spaniard?