Year: 2003
The adventures of Jasper the Time Travelling Cat (Volume 1. Episode 5)
Volume 1. Episode 5. Jasper goes to Dallas and sits on a grassy knoll. Hark! It?s a message from Jasper the intrepid time travelling cat. Those of you who have been sad enough to have been following the adventures of Jasper will know that he has been to early 20th century Russia, 16th century England and Ancient Egypt. Twice no less. But now, the dimension hopping fur bag has wound up somewhere even stranger. He crash landed on Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas on November 22nd 1963. We were getting a clear signal from him and were getting some great images and sound feed when the air was rent with a great spray of gunshots. In typical Jasper fashion, he has managed to land himself in the middle of President Kennedy?s assassination. He seems to have been arrested and taken away for questioning about some thing called a grassy knoll. We?re...
Jasper Fforde’s “The Well of Lost Plots”
Sod Harry Potter. The real deal arrives on July 1st. Sod Harry Potter. The real deal arrives on July 1st: maverick genius Jasper Fforde's highly anticipated new novel ?The Well of Lost Plots?, sequel to the highly successful ?The Eyre Affair? and the incredible ?Lost in a good book?. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! Fforde himself is appearing in my local Waterstones book store in Brighton for a reading/signing/me grovelling abjectly on the ground beneath his feet like the mangy cur that I am, in about two weeks time. And yesiree bob I have a ticket. I shall endeavour to get myself an introduction if I can and will, I have no doubt, be forcibly ejected into the street. But for our Blather readers I am willing to risk all. For those of you wondering who the hell and what the hell I am talking about, check out this review of...
The last Irish Wolf
(image by Andreas Solberg, used under a Creative Commons license) One of the world's most beautiful animals was hunted to extinction in Ireland. Why? Let me tell you something odd. I used to work in a museum and one lazy day I was casually chatting to three or four school kids about extinct Irish animals. I was confronted with a strange reaction. It started with mild cynicism and very shortly became derisive hooting laughter. This reaction, I was to discover, was due to the fact that the young men in question simply could not accept that wolves had ever lived in Ireland. I was, as far as they were concerned, a barefaced liar. I went home slightly irritated about this and I later spoke to one of my nephews about this subject, and again I was greeted with a dramatic raised eyebrow and a dismissive remark, the content of which...
Someone wanted to knife me last night
daev has to deal with blade-wielding freaks Around 4am, we were woken up by music blaring - bizarrely enough, by the godawful *Grace* By Jim McCann. This was loud. I live in a terraced row, and it was loud enough for people 3 or 4 houses away to hear. The music wasn't the only thing. It was accompanied by loud thumping on the walls, and shouts of 'come on you bollocks, I'll fucking kill you' and the like. It was clearly directed at me. I got up, paced the floor, tried to wake up and understand what the hell was going on. Maria said 'be careful', but I wasn't going anywhere. I went to phone the Gardai... as I lifted the phone there was a huge bang outside, like someone had thrown something at the door, or close to it. 'They're trying to break in', I thought. On the phone...
1924: UFOs in Co. Wexford?
daev's neck of the woods... Just found this little gem... 1924 September - Two boys in County Wexford, Ireland, watched for several minutes as a solid beam of light several feet long travelled through the air a few feet from the ground. It moved at approximately 10mph, climbing a hedge and crossing a field, before encountering a railroad track and moving off along its length. (Source: The UFO Encylopedia (Headline) p. 412/413) More »
Alasdair Gray/Dermot Healy
A weird, wonderful lunch hour I'm just back from a two-up reading by Alasdair Gray and Dermot Healy, part of the Dublin Writers Festival. Last night, I saw Andrew O'Hagan and Zadie Smith. Gray and Healy were doing their thing in Project - the trend/dated new name for the Projects Arts Theatre, or Centre, arr, whatever. I wasn't previously too aware of Healy's work... in fact my only previous encounter with him was in the Chester Beatty Library. The SO and I had ligged into a reception there, for the free booze. I think we'd drunk an earlier one into submission. We stood there, sipping our cheap wine, until we were prevailed upon by a man covered in white hair and wearing one of those green waistcoat things usually worn by farmers, or horsey people. He was quite drunk, and had his arm in a sling. The intricacies of of...
The Dead Zoo – The Irish Natural History Museum, Dublin
The Natural History Museum, Dublin. Tequila, the RUC, Aliens and Kamikaze fish. It's got it all... In a previous blather piece we had bored the pants off of you regarding a certain statue outside the The Natural History Museum on Merrion Street, Dublin. As interesting as that story is, it's not half as interesting as what lies inside... The museum has long been the source of fascination and anecdote for Dubliners and visitors alike. Affectionately referred to as the 'Dead Zoo' by locals, it has become as famous in recent years for its authentic Victorian feeling as it has for its astounding collections. The Dead Zoo Claims have often been made that Natural History Museum Dublin, or 'The Dead Zoo' as Dubliners affectionately call it, is somehow untainted, unblemished and unchanged since it's inception and opening in the 1850's. The truth is somewhat more hazy and makes interesting reading. The...
I Love B3TA
A wonderful, wonderful website Visit b3ta.com Visit this site. Often. I can't explain why, it's just too bloody funny. See some of the stuff that b3ta has inspired me to create And here's one I prepared earlier, my AngelGrinder, now available as a t-shirt
Bleddy beasties and mad hoors
Nessie back in the news... ... Dammit, Nessie is back, and so is yer man, that white witch wrestler geezer, Kevin Carlyon. He must be on his holidays. He reckons that the spell he cast in 2001 - to stop Blather's biggest fan, Jan Ove Sundberg, from snaring the beastie - was too strong, and has dramatically cut down on the number of Nessie site sightings. As if. BBC: White witch to tempt Nessie A white witch has travelled to Scotland to try to lure its most famous monster out into the open. Kevin Carlyon, high priest of the British Coven of White Witches, will cast a spell during a ritual on the shores of Loch Ness on Friday. He wants to invoke Nessie to appear again, claiming there have been few sightings since he cast a spell to protect her. Mr Carlyon, from Hastings, East Sussex, made the "blocking...
The adventures of Jasper the time travelling cat (Volume 1. Episode 4)
Volume 1. Episode 4. Ahhh. How cute. Jasper meets Shakespeare... We hadn?t heard anything for almost a week at Blather Paranormal Investigations Inc. Indeed, so bored were we that we had taken to chicken jokes and brewing our own absinthe. And then, from nowhere, out of the blue as it were, we got a signal. The wireless crackled into life, spluttered forth a stream of static and then a torrent of shrieking, mewling and miaowing. It was, indeed he. Jasper the Time Travelling cat. It didn?t take us as long to lock the signal down (we?re getting better at it) and start downloading the data. It appeared he had now time-shifted to late 16th century England. London to be precise. It was difficult to pin-point his exact location, but it seems to have been a playhouse on the south bank of the Thames river, where he has been sharing quarters...