Pod Insights The Blindboy Podcast The shared history of Madeira Cake, Crack Cocaine and Bicycle Repairs About this episode The shared history of Madeira Cake, Crack Cocaine and Bicycle Repairs Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:15 Blindboy Boatclub? Go bareback on Rod Stewart's toothless unicorn, you juicy Susans. Welcome to the Blind Eye Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast, as we always have new listeners. You're more than welcome, you glorious cunts. I've had an eventful week. Well, I suppose it wasn't that eventful. I got, I got two punctures on my bicycle again. I adore cycling. I cycle everywhere. I use my bike every single day. I cycle my bicycle as an act of humility. And I've been doing this for years, as an act of humility. I'm aware that sounds ridiculous, but what I mean by that is,
2:01 Blindboy Boatclub? cycling a bicycle sets me up for the day.
2:05 Blindboy Boatclub? I, I used to have a car, fucking years ago. I drove a car. And I used to dislike the sensation of...
2:14 Blindboy Boatclub? Arriving at my destination and feeling sluggish, feeling as if I hadn't actually travelled. Cause I hadn't. I'd sat in an armchair and pressed a button. So I never liked that. That tired sluggish feeling from driving a car. But with cycling, I'm breathing, I'm active. The wind is in my face. When I cycle into work in the morning, I, I have to be mindful. I must engage in mindfulness. I have to check in with the environment and go, how cold is it? Is it going to rain? How should I dress? How should I prepare? Is it windy? That requires mindfulness. That requires noticing and checking in with my environment.
2:58 Blindboy Boatclub? Grounding myself to a certain extent. You gotta be in the here and now, in the present moment. You ever get into a car, drive to your destination and not remember getting there? You can't do that with a bike. When you arrive at your destination on a bicycle, you remember the journey, because you were present. You don't get that with a car. You can get into a car with your head up your arse and not really even notice if it's raining. I fucking love it if it's raining in the morning. The, the more treacherous the weather, the more I like it. Head to toe waterproof Gore-Tex, waterproof boots. I love cycling in the wind and rain. While also being warm and dry while I'm doing it. I get a lovely feeling of accomplishment from that.
3:43 Blindboy Boatclub? And then just the act of cycling itself, it's just the right amount of effort. It's not painful, it's not unpleasant, but it's not, it's not as easy as driving a car. And then before you know it, I'm in my office with wonderful, with real energy. The energy that you actually get from physical activity, rather than fake coffee energy. And because I'm self-implied, I have to motivate myself, I must motivate myself to work. And if I don't, work doesn't get done. So the reason I cycle to work, the mindfulness of preparing, the energy expenditure of the journey, when I sit down at my fucking desk,
4:24 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm now quite prepared to tolerate minor frustrations. The minor frustration of responding to an annoying email. The minor frustration of choosing to sit down and write. Rather than scroll on TikTok, minor frustration becomes very tolerable. Because I've just cycled into work. I'm not gonna procrastinate writing back to that email. I've just cycled into work in the rain. I'm gonna answer the email. This is nothing. I've just cycled into work in the fucking rain. I cycle, I cycle as an act of humility. And this humility, it's informed by Buddhism and humanistic psychology.
5:06 Blindboy Boatclub? When I choose to cycle into work, I'm embracing the inevitable discomfort of life. Cycling into rain and cold and wind, accepting it, tolerating it, preparing for it. That reminds me that comfort is a luxury. It's not an entitlement. Number two, when I cycle, I acknowledge my place in nature. I'm just a bag of bones and flesh. I'm vulnerable to wind and rain and cold. I'm practicing self-discipline. Getting on a bike if it's freezing and raining, that's not nice. It's difficult, but to do it anyway, that's discipline. And when I do that, I experience it as a little victory and it builds my self-esteem.
5:50 Blindboy Boatclub? And then finally, when I cycle, I'm accepting what I can't control. I can't control the weather, the rain, the wind and the cold. I can't control these things. In the same way that I can't control anything else in my life. Do you know what I can control? How I respond to the weather, the choices that I make and how I dress myself. That sets me up for the day. That's why I cycle. It's, it's a here and now mindfulness exercise that really, really stands to me. It really fucking stands to me when it comes to delivering this podcast. Writing and delivering this podcast every single week for the past eight years without fail.
6:32 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm writing three books in the past eight years. I have to do that. I have to motivate myself to do it. And if I don't, it simply doesn't get done. No one else can step in and do it for me. Cycling every day has been a huge part of that. And if you live in a city and you're not travelling massive distances, let's just say under 20 kilometres. If you live in a city, cycling's gonna get you to your destination fucking way quicker because there's no traffic jams. Now, if you're listening and you might be thinking, "Jesus Christ, no blind bike. I love my car journey in the morning. I love listening to the radio or listening to a podcast. I love my car." Then that's absolutely fine. That's what works for you. That's what works for you.
7:14 Blindboy Boatclub? But for me, I like getting a big fat raindrop walloping off my eyeball and measuring the acidity of it when I blink. Now, cycling is fantastic until you get a fucking flat tyre. And I got a double flat tyre this week and it's because of Madeira cake. I got a, I got a sudden pang from Madeira cake. I grew up in a Madeira cake household. I've got mixed feelings about Madeira cake. If you're, if you're over in England, Scotland and Wales, you know what fucking Madeira cake is. If you're in Ireland, you know what Madeira cake is. If you're a Yank. Pound cake, you call it pound cake in America.
7:59 Blindboy Boatclub? It's a very austere type of cake. It's almost a sweet loaf of bread. It's a very moist, yellow sponge. Nothing else really going on. It's a moist, yellow sponge, just sweet enough with a lemony drizzle about it. And when I say I grew up in a Madeira cake household, we'd have a cake once a week. I remember it. I remember being a fucking child and I'd go to the bakery with my ma and stand in front of the cake counter and I would marvel.
8:39 Blindboy Boatclub? Fucking chocolate cakes, Ganesh's, Black Forest Ghetto, Black Forest fucking Ghetto, The Holy Grail, Black Forest Ghetto. Have you any idea what Black Forest Ghetto is when you're nine years of age? And you don't know what sex is yet, you don't know what riding is. Black Forest Ghetto is all you've got. These creamy looking pineapple cakes, chocolate logs. A violently extravagant display of various cakes. And my ma would go to the counter and order fucking Madeira cake. The least cakey cakes of all the cakes, the only cake. It's just fucking sponge and I used to go ape shit.
9:23 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm like, why can't we just get Black Forest Ghetto? Why not? It's not even that more expensive. Why? Why can't we just get Black Forest Ghetto? And my ma would be like, no, that's too extravagant, that's too extravagant. If you can hear a gentle pattering there, that's the rain. I'm in my brand new office, I adore this office, it's amazing. But one of the downsides is that when it rains, it's a bit louder here. And I'd rather just accept the rain. I don't want to stop recording every time it rains, that'd be a pain in the bollocks. So back to, so when I'm a child at the cake counter with my ma. She's buying Madeira cake every time, every single time.
10:04 Blindboy Boatclub? Because anything that isn't Madeira cake is too extravagant, no, that's too extravagant, we can't have that. It was real fucking Irish Catholic shit. Occasionally, coffee cake, she'd buy coffee cake. Which, again, when you're nine years of age, coffee cake is a bag of shit. Just get the Black Forest Ghetto, it's there, it's over there. It's the same price as the coffee cake, just get the fucking Black Forest Ghetto. And she'd say, no, that's too extravagant, I don't trust the cream, that's got fresh cream, I don't trust this. Coffee cake has got icing, you can trust icing. And you can always trust Madeira cake.
10:46 Blindboy Boatclub? Cause it's just sponge that's barely sweet with a drizzle of lemon about it. So the Madeira cake was purchased and after dinner on Sundays.
10:58 Blindboy Boatclub? You had a slice of Madeira cake with butter on it, to which I would argue, this is now as extravagant. The butter now makes this Madeira cake extravagant. Butter is effectively cream. It's a, this is, what's the difference between this slice of Madeira cake with butter and a Black Forest and a slice of Black Forest? No, the Black Forest is too extravagant. So I'd have my slice of Sunday Madeira cake with butter on it. Livid. Livid because it didn't make sense. It wasn't even a money thing. The Black Forest Gator wasn't that much more expensive than a fucking Madeira cake. It was just, it was this principle of that's too much, that's too extravagant.
11:41 Blindboy Boatclub? You're going too far now. That's too far. And I'd get Black Forest Gator once a year on my fucking birthday. But looking back, she was probably right. There's wonderful humidity in a Madeira cake. There's no bullshit about a Madeira cake. It's a regular cake that's been stripped of everything. It's just sponge and a bit of flavour. It's a naked cake. It doesn't have cream or cherries or chocolate or diaries that look like lingerie. Lingery.
12:12 Blindboy Boatclub? There's no lingering cake diaries and Madeira cake. Madeira cake is the, it's the cycling to work of the cake world. It's humble and simple and austere. And every so often, I'd get a pang for some fucking Madeira cake. I will get an insatiable desire to go and buy some Madeira cakes. That's what I did. I did that this week to remind myself what it tasted like. But I didn't want a shitty petrol station Madeira cake. I wanted the real deal. I wanted one that was made in a bakery. That's what I did. I got on my bicycle. But I knew that on the way to this bakery, there's an underpass. There's a particular underpass.
12:58 Blindboy Boatclub? So Limerick, this episode has taken some, some very unexpected twists and turns. So Limerick has a crack cocaine problem. There's been a crack cocaine problem in Limerick for about six years. I don't know what it is specifically, but crack cocaine seems to be the hard drug in Limerick that's causing the most issues for people who are suffering from addiction. So in order for me to go to the bakery, the route that I have to take, I have to go underneath an underpass where crack dealers sell crack cocaine and also where loads of people smoke
13:38 Blindboy Boatclub? crack cocaine. Now, you might be thinking, Jesus, that sounds really dangerous. Is this bakery in a mad shady area? No, it's just this one underpass and for whatever reason, the crack dealers have decided this is where we sell crack and people who use crack have decided this is where we smoke crack. It's an underpass. It's out of the way in an area which is fine. People just get on with their lives. Is it dangerous in the underpass where the, where the dealers are selling crack? No, not really. They're professional drug dealers. This is their job. Their job is to sell
14:19 Blindboy Boatclub? crack. Lads in their late twenties and early thirties, and this is how they earn a living.
14:27 Blindboy Boatclub? The last thing they want is attention or trouble or violence or anything at all. So people frequently, they walk underneath the underpass with their dogs, people cycle underneath the underpass while the crack dealers are just hanging out, selling crack. Nobody's happy with it. I'm sure people would prefer if it wasn't happening, but people just, they go about their day and they use the underpass and they don't appear to be intimidated and the dealers aren't trying to be intimidating. They're minding their own business. They don't look at people or interact in the most fucked up way possible. I can only describe them as professional and then hidden away in crevices
15:11 Blindboy Boatclub? near the underpass, people smoke crack and it smells like...
15:18 Blindboy Boatclub? A dirty exhaust pipe. When a car goes past and, and the exhaust pipe is burnt. That's what crack smoke smells like. So people just, they just use the underpass. Walking their dogs, students on bicycles. A lot of footfall. Every so often, the guards will come down. The crack dealers will disappear. The people who are smoking crack will disappear. And then they'll be back half an hour later. Now, there's other areas in the city where it's like, don't go in there. If you go in there, they're selling drugs. And if you do go in there, they don't have any business in there. You're gonna be stared at and it will feel intimidating and you, you'll get the message to leave.
16:00 Blindboy Boatclub? Like a few months back, I, I recorded a podcast a few months back. Where I walked around Limerick City and told some of the history. And while I was recording that, I was very mindful of, there's a tiny cul-de-sac there. And I know what goes on in there and I've no business being in there. So I'm not going in there. But this underpass, that's different. It doesn't particularly feel shady or unsafe. Because the crack dealers want to make money. This is their place of business. They just hang around there all day, minding their own business. Frequently on their phones. Young lads come up on e-scooters and deliver crack to them. And then other people walk up and purchase the crack.
16:42 Blindboy Boatclub? Now, what is kinda sad about the area is, I don't wanna give away the location to this place. I really don't wanna do that. I'm not protecting crack dealers. Like I said, the guard, the guards are there. The guards know what's happening. Otherwise, I wouldn't see them there. I just don't, I don't want anyone listening going, oh, I'm gonna go see Blind Boys. Friendly crack alley. But right beside the area where the crack is being sold is.
17:11 Blindboy Boatclub? I'd describe it as an emerging shanty town, by which I mean, it's tents. It's homeless people's tents, but with a sense of permanence about them. They're not just tents, they're building things around the tents using crates and whatever they can find. And something that's powerfully dystopian is they're taking politicians' posters, like Fine Gael and Fine Fall, posters from the last general election. And, and they're putting all these fucking politicians' posters underneath their tents to stop the floors from flooding.
17:50 Blindboy Boatclub? These poor people have had their, they've had their little tents out during the storms that we've been experiencing this month. And as, as terrible as it is to live in those conditions, I do feel a little bit happy for them sometimes when I go past because there's, there's 10 or 12 people, and at the very least, that they have a sense of place. And in the evenings, they light a bonfire, and as dystopian as it is, they seem a tiny bit happier than the homeless people in town who just keep getting moved on and moved on and moved on and are in sleeping bags in doorways.
18:31 Blindboy Boatclub? The people in this tent encampment that has a semi-permanence because of pallets and election posters, they chat to each other around the fire. Now, I don't want to cast aspersions on any of the people living in these tents because there's a huge homeless crisis and rent in Limerick has gone up, I think 15% in the past year. I don't want to cast aspersions on these people, but given that the tents are literally beside this place where the crack is being sold, I would assume that these people are also smoking crack. But anyway, in order for me to purchase the Madeira cake, this underpass was on my route.
19:13 Blindboy Boatclub? Now, I know for a fact that there's a lot of glass, there's a lot of glass in this underpass from crack pipes, from crack pipes that have been smashed. People who smoke crack smoke it in glass pipes. And the HSE and certain drug charities in Limerick, they hand out crack pipes to people who smoke crack. Now, I want to make it really clear that I'm not- Judging or finger wagging at anybody who's experiencing addiction, who is self medicating for trauma. When I was nine years of age, my biggest problem is that my ma wouldn't buy me a Black Forest cake and I had to put up with Madeira cake instead. So I'm very aware of the safety net that I grew up with.
19:56 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm just describing a thing that's happening, a thing that's, it's there in the open, you can see it. The drugs charities know about it. The police know about it. We're living in a society that places profits above the, the rights and compassion for people. We're living in, like I said, Limerick City rents have gone up fifteen percent in the past year. So now we're witnessing the trauma of addiction. And this isn't a Limerick thing either, because Limerick has an unfair reputation. Every city and town in Ireland is experiencing this sadness. So I'm cycling along anyway, on my way to the bakery to purchase my Madeira cake. And then I go, oh, there's the underpass, there's the underpass where crack is being
20:41 Blindboy Boatclub? sold and where there's loads of broken glass on the ground from crack pipes. Now, what I'd like to do is get off my bike and then walk it through the area where there's definitely loads of broken glass. But even though I said this underpass is relatively safe, I'm not walk, I'm not doing that. I, I'd like to cycle past the crack dealers if I can. I'm not gonna get off my bike and then slowly walk it through the glass. Let them mind their business and I'm gonna mind my business. So I said, fuck it, I'll just take the risk, I'll have to cycle through the broken glass.
21:17 Blindboy Boatclub? So I do, and I get to the bakery and I buy myself my austere, boring Madeira cake loaf. And when I get back out to my bicycle, lo and behold, two fucking tyres, two tyres gone. So now I've got a double puncture. And I was livid. That's incredibly frustrating because bicycles are fantastic, absolutely fantastic, until you get a puncture or worse, a double puncture. So I said, fuck it, I'm gonna have to now manually wheel this bike. To the bicycle repair shop to get it fixed, there's one inside in town. But manually wheeling a bike with a double puncture, it's like,
22:01 Blindboy Boatclub? it's like leading a depressed horse to its death. I had to trudge through the city
22:09 Blindboy Boatclub? with two wobbly wheels scooching along at a snail's pace. All the while with this fucking Madeira cake in between my elbow like I'm breastfeeding. The fucking Madeira cake, because I don't have spare hands now, because I have to put two hands on the bicycle. Now, there's a wonderful bicycle repair shop in Limerick City. I mentioned them two years ago when they opened up. And if you cycle to work every single day, you'll know you get a lot of punctures or your mudguard comes off. Your bike is going to break a lot, so you need a good repair service. And these lads are fantastic. Independent bike repair shop. I've gotten punctures at nine in the morning, handed them in the bike.
22:53 Blindboy Boatclub? I have it two hours later. Mudguards came off, same shit. Incredible service. I'm thinking about how wonderful this bike service is. On the way to the bike shop, I'm crawling along, dragging this fucking bike like a dying horse. It's taken so long that I start to get hungry. So now I start eating, taking nibbles off the top of the Madeira cake. Highly undignified behaviour. I eventually make it to the bike shop and I hand them in the bicycle and say, there's two punctures, can you sort that out? They say, yes, we can. That's fine. We'll have it for you in a half an hour. Unfortunately, we're closing permanently this Friday. Devastating news. I say to them, why? Why are you closing down?
23:37 Blindboy Boatclub? This place is always busy. There's always like two or three people ahead of me getting their bicycles repaired. All the Deliveroo drivers and the fucking Uber drivers with their electric bikes. They're constantly in and out of the shop. There's perpetual business in this place, why are you closing down? We can't afford the rent. We can't afford the rent of this building in Limerick City centre, we have to close the business. So now there's no independent bicycle repair shop in Limerick City. A city with over a hundred thousand people, with loads of bike tracks and loads of people who cycle. There's no independent bicycle repair shop. Well, there's one, but he doesn't fucking count, because he's greedy.
24:19 Blindboy Boatclub? And I've been stung by this fucker before, what he does is, he takes on more bikes than he can handle. So you give him your bike and say, my bicycle is broken, when can you fix it? He says, oh, I'll have that fixed tomorrow. And then he'll keep you waiting three weeks. And he never answers the phone and he doesn't answer emails. So you have to physically walk twenty minutes to his shop, see if your bike is fixed or not. And he's done that to me three times, so I can't go to him anymore. Waiting three weeks to get your bike fixed, that doesn't count. And then the other options are in far out retail parks. And there's two giant bike shops that are run by international bike corporations.
25:02 Blindboy Boatclub? But they refuse to service your bicycle if you didn't buy it from them. If I went to them with a flat tyre, they'd charge me fifty quid just to look at it. And I have to order a disabled taxi to try and fit my bike into the back of it to have it taken to the retail park to even get the fucking thing fixed in the first place. So now, in a fairly large Irish city, you can't get your bicycle fixed because it's too expensive for an independent bicycle repair person to exist. What shops can afford to rent out in Limerick City centre? Well, there's lots of high street shops, huge big brands.
25:46 Blindboy Boatclub? And then there's loads of weird little American candy shops and loads of vape shops and shops that sell souvenirs and bongs. Shops that manage to stay open, but no one's ever in there buying anything. And some of these shops don't even have prices on things. And they only accept cash. And when you wanna buy something, if you do wanna buy something, sometimes they'll just make the price up. They just make the price up when you walk in. And not just Limerick, this is happening in lots of towns and cities in Ireland. It's happening in London too. I did a podcast a couple of years ago about American sweet shops in Oxford Street.
26:27 Blindboy Boatclub? And the speculation is, is that some of these businesses are money laundering operations. Now, not all of them, but some businesses. If they're just selling all these American sweets that never go off, that don't have any prices on the shelves. Or if they're selling shitty vapes, not a good vape shop, but a really shit vape shop. And it's a cash only business and there's no prices. Well, the speculation is, is that these businesses are somehow owned or run by criminal enterprises. And what they do is they wash money, they wash money for drugs gangs.
27:09 Blindboy Boatclub? And this has started to happen in Ireland because the Criminal Assets Bureau are getting really good at chasing down drug dealers' money. So all of those crack dealers, they're part of a gang, a larger gang. There's a few gangs in Limerick. And it's speculated that the leaders of these gangs, a veil of the services of international gangs, who own shops that sell bullshit and create fake receipts in a cash only business as a way to launder money for drugs gangs. And there's a lot of shops where it's, how are you open? No one is ever in here, no one's buying anything. How is this shop open? How is this shop open when no one buys anything?
27:52 Blindboy Boatclub? But the independent bicycle repair shop that had non-stop, constant business all day, can't afford the rent and has to shut down. And now we're all fucked if we want our bikes repaired. And the thing is. If you're in Limerick City, if you live in Limerick City centre and you want to make money now, start repairing bikes out of your flat. Go down the black market drug dealer route. If you've got an apartment, if you're handy with tools and you can do same day repair for people who are too busy to repair their own bike or don't have space, then you're gonna make a lot of money. And you're gonna have to have a little client base in your phone like a drug dealer and you're gonna have to do it all cash and you're gonna have to do it secretly.
28:37 Blindboy Boatclub? Because we all need someone who can repair fucking bikes in Limerick City, but if you wanna go legit and open up a little shop, you won't be able to afford it because the rents are too high. So you have to be a black market bicycle repairman. And if you're saying to me, blind bike, would you not fix, would you not fix both of your tyres yourself? I could, yeah. But now I'm in the middle of town in my office, in the hallway fixing a bicycle. It's messy, it's awkward, it would piss off everybody in my office and I don't have time. This podcast isn't me whinging about I can't get my bicycle fixed in Limerick City. What I'm trying, what this podcast is about is systemic collapse.
29:20 Blindboy Boatclub? What I'm describing here is systemic collapse. Why can I find five shops where I can buy American candy, but I can't get somebody to repair my bike? And if I do try to take my broken bicycle to one of the two massive multinational bicycle corporations in Limerick, they won't fix my bike because I didn't buy it off them. So if your bike breaks down in a large Irish city, a city which is investing massively in bicycle infrastructure because of climate change, if your bike breaks down, you're fucked. Fix it yourself or buy a branded bike from the multinational bike shop and then they
30:03 Blindboy Boatclub? might repair it if you're willing to get into a taxi and go to a retail park. What does that? The extortionately high rents, that means that it's not feasible to open a bicycle repair shop, even though it's successful. What does that have to do with crack cocaine? And an emerging shanty town? And loads of shops, loads of shops that sell American sweets that no one's buying? What does all of that? Are all of these things connected? Are they connected in some way? And I was thinking this. When I collected my bicycle, the lads did a wonderful job. Two punctures, took, took an hour to do, that was it. Collected the bike, paid for it at a reasonable price.
30:48 Blindboy Boatclub? And I cycled off, feeling terrible that I know that that business is gonna close, and then anyone with a bike in Limerick is fucked. And I left wondering if all these things were connected, and then specifically wondering, because this is just what my brain does. I wonder, is it connected to Madeira cake in any way? And it turns out, it is, quite heavily. And I'll explain why this systemic collapse is intimately connected to Madeira cake, after the Ocarina pause. Now, I don't have my Ocarina with me right now, but what I do have are some sleigh bells. I don't know where they came from, but I'm in the possession of sleigh bells. So I'm gonna play some sleigh bells, nice and gently, and then you're gonna hear an advert for something.
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36:08 Blindboy Boatclub? That was the Sleigh Bell Pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindbypodcast. This podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck, please consider signing up to the Patreon page. This is a listener-funded podcast. This is also my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free, because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. Patreon.com/theblindbypodcast.
36:53 Blindboy Boatclub? Also, it keeps this podcast independent. No advertiser can come in and tell me what to speak about. Let's plug a few gigs. This Friday, the 28th of February, I'm in Belfast in the Waterfront Theatre. I believe that's sold out. Then, March 7th, I'm in the Aineck down in Killarney. There's a few tickets left for that of a wonderful guest. 13th of March, Cork Opera House, as part of the Cork Podcast Festival. Then, Australia and New Zealand tour in March and the start of April. That is sold out. Limerick in April, that's sold out, fucking hell. And then off to Scotland and England in June, right?
37:37 Blindboy Boatclub? That's Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, London, East Sussex and Norwich in June. Those gigs are setting out really quickly. And I know it's June and it's a good few months away, but get your tickets for those gigs. They're at vane.co.uk/blindby. So back to the Madeira cake. Did I enjoy purchasing my Madeira cake this week? Yeah, it was okay. I was just trying to rekindle a childhood memory, but I'll be honest, it feels like a fucking waste. If I'm gonna buy a cake, I'd prefer to buy a better cake than a Madeira cake. I don't require such austerity when it comes to desserts.
38:20 Blindboy Boatclub? But what does Madeira cake have to do with the fact that I can't get my bicycle repaired in Limerick City? What does Madeira cake have to do with... An emerging shanty tone.
38:32 Blindboy Boatclub? And I mean that as no disrespect to the people living there, but I grew up in Limerick City. I've never seen a collection of homeless people needing to build shanties, semi-permanent structures in order to live. And it's happening because there's no more social housing, there's no more social housing, and rent is extortionate. Property prices are extortionate. It's out of the reach of the average person. So the Madeira cake gets its name from the island of Madeira. Madeira is an island. Off the coast of Africa, North Africa, a good bit out from Morocco.
39:15 Blindboy Boatclub? The name Madeira, it means wood. It's the Portuguese name for wood. There's a reason for that. What, 600 years ago, in 1420, because of advances in sailing technology, boat technology, Portugal found and landed on the island of Madeira. This island that was so full of forests that they named it wood, they named it Madeira. Now, in 1420, the economic system of much of Europe was known as feudalism. Land was owned by a lord or a king.
39:57 Blindboy Boatclub? Peasants worked on the land, not necessarily for money, more to feed themselves, and then they gave a portion of what they grew, or what they raised with cattle, and they gave that to the lord who owned the land. The concept of work and labour, it's tied in with tradition. If your dad was a blacksmith, you were a blacksmith. You weren't necessarily a blacksmith to earn a bunch of money and become rich, or escape being a blacksmith. The way that people thought about labour and land was quite different and tied in with tradition and a bit of religion.
40:37 Blindboy Boatclub? When Portugal discovered the island of Madeira in 1420, there was nobody living there. There was no indigenous people on Madeira. It was literally an island full of trees. This was no land. Now, in feudalism, land is passed down through lords and peasants, and there's strict rules about who can own it and who can work on the land. But with Madeira being discovered, there's no rules now. Like, here's a giant fucking island. Portugal said, "What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do with this new island?" So the Portuguese crown started giving land grants to settlers to move to Madeira,
41:20 Blindboy Boatclub? to burn and chop down all the wood, and to start raising animals there for profit. There's no tradition here, there's no peasant villages. No one is bound to this land. There's no list of kings who used to own this land. There's no stories, there's no mythology. This is just new land to be exploited for profit, and for that profit to be exported back to Portugal, mostly in the form of wood. Now, something else you have to realise about Europe in 1420. Sugar was incredibly rare. Now, humans love sweet things, and Europeans would have had honey, honey from bees. But fucking sugar?
42:06 Blindboy Boatclub? Sugar as you and I know it. So sugar comes from sugarcane, which is a type of grass that came from Papua New Guinea and grew around India in the 1400s. You couldn't really grow sugarcane. There was a few parts of southern Spain, the island of Cyprus, you could grow sugarcane. But the areas where you could grow sugarcane in Europe, there was fuck all. And also, getting sugarcane and then refining that into the granulated powder that we know as sugar, that was very difficult to do, and it was knowledge that was held mostly by the Islamic caliphates in Europe, such as the one in Spain. So in 1420, sugar was an extreme luxury item
42:50 Blindboy Boatclub? that only incredibly rich people could get their hands on. But then Portugal figured out, this new island of Madeira that they'd just taken over, had the perfect climate and the perfect fertile soil. To start growing this grass, this grass called sugarcane from Papua New Guinea. So by about the fourteen nineties, Portugal now had a sugarcane trade on this Madeira island. And this wasn't feudalism, this was a new system. And it was being funded by bankers from Flanders and Genoa. A sugar industry was emerging on this island. And they were refining the sugar on the island.
43:31 Blindboy Boatclub? And refining sugarcane into sugar is a very resource intensive process. They had to cut down all the wood to burn the wood to refine the sugarcane juice into granulated sugar. And this sugar isn't just being sent back to Portugal like a resource. The sugar is now being sold as a commodity for profit. And people are getting very wealthy from the sale of sugar. Greed steps in, they want more profits. How do we make more money from this sugar? Well, Madeira, like I said, is this island just off the coast of Africa. So now you start to see, this is where the emergence of the slave trade happens. Chattle slavery, it's fourteen ninety.
44:15 Blindboy Boatclub? America hasn't been quote unquote discovered yet. Portugal captures slaves at first from the Canary Islands and then from the west coast of Africa. And now you have forced chattel slavery, working on sugar plantations. In Madeira, on the island of Madeira, financed by bankers for the production of sugar for profit. Madeira is seen as, Madeira is widely credited as ground zero for what we now call capitalism. Markets, profits, commodities. See, under feudalism, crops were grown to feed people, to meet people's needs. And then the king might take a share of that, whereas in Madeira in fourteen ninety.
45:01 Blindboy Boatclub? Now crops are being grown exclusively for profit as a commodity. And that's the origins of capitalism. You have slave labor. Profit is more important than people's lives or safety. You have the utter destruction of the environment. Eventually, all the trees in Madeira, this island that's called wood. Eventually, it's stripped of all its wood. Because in order to refine sugar, you need fuckloads of wood to burn it, to boil the sugar. The sugar boom on Madeira by the 1530s, it couldn't go on anymore because there was no wood left. It wasn't possible to grow sugar in Madeira. Then Portugal by the 15 fucking 30s. Now Portugal's thirsty.
45:46 Blindboy Boatclub? This isn't feudalism anymore. This is about expansion. This is about colonial empire. They move on to Brazil. You start to see the colonization of the new world, the Caribbean, the Atlantic slave trade. Colonizing, murdering, dehumanizing, destroying the environment to create cash crops. Such as sugar, cotton, tobacco exclusively for profit to generate wealth at the expense of all else. And that there is capitalism. And capitalism begins with colonization and slavery. But what does the island of Madeira do? Now that it's run out of wood and they can't make sugar there anymore.
46:27 Blindboy Boatclub? Well, they move to wine production because wine didn't need as much wood, it didn't need as much water. So they start growing grapes. But here's the thing, by about 1560, the Atlantic slave trade is in full swing. And Madeira is still this kind of isolated island off the west coast of Africa. The wine didn't travel very well. When wine made it from Madeira, we'll say back to Portugal, it was a bit sour. It didn't taste right. So what they started to do in Madeira was they got their wine and then they added brandy, which is distilled wine. They added pure alcohol to the wine. They fortified it. But then what happened? Certain ships, ships would be traveling from Europe.
47:11 Blindboy Boatclub? Then they would stop off in Madeira and then they would go from Madeira to the Caribbean. If they took fortified wine with them, the heat and the long journey, the long journey of taking a cask of wine. All the way across the Atlantic Ocean in the blistering heat for like three months. This gave that wine a very unique taste, a very sweet, strong taste. And this became known as Madeira wine. But as you can imagine, wine that needs to be aged at sea in the blistering heat and needs to go to the Caribbean and back in order to mature. That's very, very expensive. That's incredibly expensive.
47:55 Blindboy Boatclub? So Madeira wine became a fancy commodity that only the wealthiest people could afford. Now, Madeira was a port of call, it was called. So by about the 1600s, so we're talking the transatlantic slave trade here. So slaves, enslaved people are stolen from Africa and taken to the Americas or South America. Often these fleets of ships, they would stop off in Madeira, the port of call. Cause think of a map of the world. If you're going from Africa over to America, Madeira is this island. It's the last port of call before you get to America.
48:39 Blindboy Boatclub? So loads of fleets of ships would stop off in Madeira for supplies and they'd get this Madeira wine. Now by the 1600s, Britain heavily involved in colonization and the slave trade, obviously. Britain was very friendly with Portugal. Britain and Portugal were almost like allies. And Britain wasn't friendly with France and wasn't friendly with Spain. So Britain favored Portuguese wine. Britain favored Madeira wine, but this was a luxury good, very expensive wine to produce. And if you, if you were English and you got your hands on fucking Madeira wine, you were probably associated with the slave trade.
49:18 Blindboy Boatclub? So by the 1800s, really wealthy posh Brits, one of the fanciest drinks they could drink was Madeira wine. And this is where the Madeira cake starts to get invented. There's no Madeira wine in the Madeira cake. But the reason the Madeira cake is called the fucking Madeira cake is because very wealthy Brits, who probably made money from the slave trade, they would eat this lemon sponge cake in the evenings, but they'd drink sweet Madeira wine with it. So that's where the name Madeira cake comes from. Now often with Ireland.
49:57 Blindboy Boatclub? A lot of food that we, so my, my ma's insistence on Madeira cake, that's actually a post-colonial, that's a post-colonial hangover right there. So why is my ma, why is my ma, an Irish Catholic who doesn't come from money? How did Madeira cake become something in Ireland that we, we buy on a Sunday? How did that happen? Well, it's the same as, I, before I did a podcast on the Irish summer salad. Okay, the Irish fucking summer salad, which is cold ham, eggs, bit of lettuce. You know, the Irish summer salad. Well, the Irish summer salad comes from the English garden salad. We were colonized, colonized by Britain.
50:42 Blindboy Boatclub? And you had in Ireland, the big house, the big colonial house. Around the 1800s, when Madeira wine was really popular, you would have had a lot of big colonial houses in Ireland. So you have the wealthy English landlord, who's probably also a slave owner, with his summer house in Ireland. And this summer house would have implied a lot of local poorer Irish Catholics as servants and maids. And these servants and maids, they would have witnessed the rich, wealthy Brits eating the Madeira cake, eating Madeira cake every night at seven o'clock with the Madeira wine.
51:24 Blindboy Boatclub? And the Madeira wine never became part of Irish culture because it's just way too expensive. But the fucking cake did because it's just a pound cake. It's not that expensive really to make a Madeira cake. You're talking sugar, lemon, eggs, milk, flour. So our love of Madeira cakes in Ireland, it's colonial self-hatred. It's Irish maids and servants 200 years ago, watching what British slave owners ate in their big country houses in Cork and Tipperary. And then Irish people recreating that cake to mimic our, our wealthy overlords. Because our minds were colonized. And you have to realize in Ireland, you had these huge, big plantation houses
52:09 Blindboy Boatclub? with the wealthy Brits in it. And then everyone worked there and Irish people worshipped.
52:16 Blindboy Boatclub? The local wealthy English person, it's difficult to try and understand it now. But like in nineteen eighteen, there was an IRA fella, an organizer, an IRA organizer. Arnie O'Malley was his name. When Arnie O'Malley was training young IRA members, he would deliberately train them on the grounds of big English houses in Ireland to rid the young men of their inherent respect for the house's owner. One of the IRA's biggest campaigns, I'm talking, we'll say nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty-two, one of the biggest campaigns was burning down the big houses, the plantation houses,
52:57 Blindboy Boatclub? as propaganda to decolonize the minds of the Irish people, to let the Irish people know, no, these big wealthy Brits, because just because they own the big house doesn't mean they're more important than you are. So from that you get things like Madeira cake. If the wealthy Brits are eating that up in the fucking house, then the maids and the servants, they copy it in their own homes. And then that ends up with me in the nineteen nineties with my mother demanding fucking Madeira cake on a Sunday. That's how it crept into Irish food culture. It's post-colonial shame. It's your great-great-grandparents trying to be like the local British slave owner.
53:38 Blindboy Boatclub? And what does Madeira cake have to do with me not being able to get my fucking bike fixed? Because the island of Madeira, that's the origin of capitalism right there. Property currently in Ireland is being treated solely as a commodity, completely removed from the needs of the people, or to service the common good. Property is now simply a thing that can be hoarded to generate profits. And that's why rent is so expensive. That's why the local bike shop had to close down. And what about the two gigantic international bike companies?
54:17 Blindboy Boatclub? Who won't repair my bike because I didn't buy it from them. And if I bring them my bike, they'll charge me an exorbitant fee. Because personally, I feel that should be illegal. If I rock up to the bike shop and say to them, "Can you please fix my puncture?", and they say, "We can, but there's an extra charge because that's not our bike", that should be illegal. That feels like that should be illegal to me. It feels very, very wrong. The reason it isn't illegal is because of deregulation, another tennis of neoliberal capitalism. That big bike corporation's right to profit is more important than me having fair access to getting my bike fixed, to getting my puncture repaired.
55:00 Blindboy Boatclub? Those people living in a shanty town, they live in a shanty town because their humanity, their humanity, their dignity, their safety, these things are less important than profits from housing as a commodity that can be hoarded. The American sweet shops that are propping up to wash the money of the crack dealers. Yeah, that's illegal. That is illegal. But is that any different, really, than Apple or Google coming to Ireland to wash their money in fucking Dublin to completely evade tax?
55:41 Blindboy Boatclub? So that the average person pays more tax than giant fucking multi-billion corporations? Profits being more important than the common good? Profits being more important than human dignity, human needs, the rights of the community, safety? All of that shit, the island of Madeira in Portugal, that's where the world got its first taste for unfettered capitalism. If you're living, if you are living in Limerick City centre and you're handy with fixing things and you want to start a black market bicycle repair operation from your flat, please do and give me a shout. There's huge demand for it. And it's needed because we're at the mercy of the market.
56:27 Blindboy Boatclub? What should be happening, that bicycle repair shop shouldn't have gone out of business. If Limerick City cares about the environment, if Limerick City actually wants people cycling to fucking work.
56:39 Blindboy Boatclub? If they're investing in all these bike tracks and greenways, then invest in services where people can repair their fucking bikes. If you're one of the crack dealers and you want to go astray and you don't want to set a crack anymore, just stay where you are. Stay by that area and just hang around and people will show up and ask for their bikes to be fixed if you can do it. The market is there. The market is there. All right. Rub a dog. Genuflect to a swan. Wink at a cat. I'll catch you next week. Dog bless.
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