Facts that I avoided telling my Barber during a recent Haircut

Aperol Spritz, the sweat of a stressed Accountant and a Chimney Sweeps scrotum Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:58Speaker 01

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• 1:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  Strangle a Gannett, you jangly Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, if this is your first ever episode of the Blind Boy Podcast, then consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, a steaming quaver, a ten-foot Declan, you know the crack, you're very welcome. I'm just back from another difficult haircut. It's actually a fantastic haircut. I'm very, very happy with the aesthetic results of the haircut itself, which there's no point, there's no point describing it. Because I wear a plastic bag on my head, so there's no point describing the haircut. I'm not into haircuts.

• 2:15Blindboy Boatclub?

  Paint the wall magnolia and hang a sign that says live, laugh, love. That's the type of haircut that I get. You know, when you walk into an Airbnb, you open the door, you put your bags down, you take a look around and you acknowledge that, yes, this apartment appears to be what I booked. It looks like the photographs in Airbnb. This looks about right, but now that I am here, everything's a bit shit generic and cheap, isn't it? They've done the bare minimum here. I used to use Airbnb years ago, 12, 13 years ago, before it was evil. Now it's destroying cities. What it used to be, it was a pure recession thing. It was a recession thing when people didn't have money.

• 2:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  You'd go to Spain or Italy and a real life human being is letting you use their home for a weekend. And it was way cheaper than hotel rooms. You'd actually meet the host, the person whose house it is. And yes, it was really cheap, but it came with like a massive human responsibility of this is someone else's home and I have to be respectful here. When I was writing my first book in 2016, 2015, that's the service I used to avail of in Spain. And the host would be really excited that like an Irish writer is coming over to write their book in my apartment. There was substance and authenticity and humanity to it.

• 3:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Then about 2017 onwards, that changes. You're no longer meeting your host. You start to get the feeling that the host you're speaking to on the app doesn't actually own the apartment, that they might actually be someone who's hired to manage it. Then you get to Spain or Italy and there's no human being to meet you. Instead, there's an app and your keys to the apartment aren't given to you by a human being. They're in a lockbox that you need a code to open. You go, fuck it, who cares? You walk into the apartment, you open the door and you become acquainted with that, the Airbnb aesthetic, which is, this is very cheaply designed to look like someone lives here, but no one fucking lives here. We're faking it just enough to make it look nice in photographs.

• 4:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  But if someone who's here on holiday gets shitfaced and trashes the place or projectile vomits, everything from the chairs to the toaster to the picture frames are very easily and cheaply replaceable. The walls are magnolia and there's a live, laugh, love sign. And the floors are a silvery type of wood veneer, millennial gray. And all the furniture comes from a centralized website that furnishes Airbnb properties all around the world. That's why they look the same. And it's a specific look. It's not the landlord look. Like the landlord look, a landlord will just fuck you over. Land, the landlord look is,

• 5:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  why is this, why, why is this light switch hard to use? Oh, someone has painted over it 35 times. There's a centimeter of emulsion paint and that's why I can't use the light switch. That's the landlord look. They don't give a fuck. Airbnb is different. Airbnb has to make an immediate good first impression, but ultimately you're dealing with shit. That's the type of haircut that I get. That's the type of haircut that I want. Cut my hair as if it's an Airbnb apartment. Cause I just wanna blend in. I just wanna blend in with the crowd and not draw any attention to myself. First glance, yeah, everything's all right with this fellow's head. Nothing special going on here though, let's move on.

• 5:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, not like the old days of Airbnb where you walk into that, that Spanish apartment and you go, oh my God, is that real mahogany? I better get a close look at that. And you're there in, in someone's house, marveling at the intricate carving on a mahogany fucking sideboard that could be 150 years old. That's what Airbnb used to be 15 years ago. I don't want that haircut. I don't want a haircut that's so nice that someone notices it or God forbid wants to talk about it. I want soap dispensers in the shower and a television bolted to the wall. That's the haircut that I want. Can you give me that? Airbnb is really, it's done a lot of damage, hasn't it?

• 6:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  The southwest of Ireland, like Dingle down in Kerry, which is, I mean utterly beautiful, utterly stunning place, which traditionally received a lot of tourism. But now there's so many Airbnb properties for short-term letting that there's shortages of like nurses and police and teachers in Dingle, cause they can't fucking live there. In Naples over in Italy, which was never huge with tourists because Naples was always a little bit rough around the edges compared to the likes of Milan. But now inner city Naples is full of Airbnbs. But they're being run by the Camara.

• 7:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Camara are the Neapolitan mafia. But the Camara, who used to be very heavily involved in the heroin trade, they've moved on from heroin now and now they run Airbnbs. They buy up entire buildings and fill them full of tiny apartments. And they open Aperol Spritz bars and fuck Aperol Spritz while we're here. It's disgusting. Now I know you might be thinking, oh, I love my Aperol Spritz. Do you really? Or have you been marketed to? Sometimes I think I love Aperol Spritz. This wonderful, big fizzy orange drink full of ice that makes you look like you have friends. Have you ever seen a person drinking Aperol Spritz by themselves?

• 8:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, the, the entire marketing of it is, and the entire group has to get Aperol Spritz. You can't just have one on your own. If you wanna taste that on your own, you gotta get it a Negroni. Actually, if you did order an Aperol Spritz on your own and someone saw you, they would never assume you're on your own. They'd think that your friends are in the toilet. And sometimes I think I want an Aperol Spritz until I order it and drink it. And I taste it and I go, wow, this looks amazing. Why does it taste like this? Did you ever take a bite of a gone off satsuma? A satsuma that looks absolutely fine on one side, but then hidden on the dark side of the satsuma is a soft sunken brose, a wet brose dotted with fluffy turke ice mould.

• 8:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then you eat it, that's what Aperol Spritz tastes like. And with very subtle tones of human sweat. Also present in its bouquet, there's a group of profoundly stressed out chartered accountants in my office at the moment on the second floor. And I think their business is going under. They're always just outside smoking fags huddled around, very, very worried. When they leave their office on the second floor and go out into the smoking area, their, their sweat has a cat piss tang which hangs in the corridor. And then is awoken by sunlight and rises up the staircase to me at the top.

• 9:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  Their body odor, it's stress sweat, cortisol sweat. And there is a putrid citric musk in that, which I can taste in Aperol Spritz. And this, this is what's cornered the gin and tonic market. Do you not remember the giant, giant goblets of gin full of ice from 2019? What was wrong with that? How did that get replaced with Aperol Spritz? It tastes like the, the piss of a dog that's been force fed, look is it. I'm.

• 10:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm going hard on Aperol spritz, but like, how, how dare a drink have the temerity to look like that? And then taste the way it does. That's my issue. There's a slice of orange in it, like, big fresh slice of orange. The, the aperitif itself, the fucking Aperol, that's made out of the corpses of oranges. It's rotting orange. That's, that's what, that's the taste. It's what it is. You know, you know, when you go to Spain or Italy and, and you're walking down the street and there's oranges growing on the side of the road. And if you eat them, you shit yourself. And the locals say, we don't, you're going, why, why aren't you eating all the oranges that are growing on the fucking trees in Spain? And the locals go, we don't eat those. We don't eat those.

• 10:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  We don't eat them. And then you go, fuck that. I'm going to eat one. And you get the shits and it's disgusting. Well, I didn't do that. My brother did it and destroyed his honeymoon. But that's what's in Aperol spritz. The ghosts of those orange peels. And we keep buying them. I'm pissed off at me. It's me. I'm actually angry with myself because the next time I, if I'm out in the sun and there's people around, I'm probably going to order an Aperol spritz, even though I know what it tastes like. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it to myself again. And it'll arrive down. Wow, look how refreshing this looks. And then I put my lips around the straw and I'm instantly sucking the urethra of a Labrador and thinking about the, the armpits of the stressed

• 11:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  out accountants. Just give me one of those gigantic glasses of gin. And tonic, elderflower tonic, full of ice with some peppercorns in it. That's fit for a 35 year old woman from 2019. But anyway, the Kamara, they operate spritz bars in Naples and they run Airbnbs. And they protect tourists. If, if, if a local criminal decides he wants to rob a tourist or pickpocket, they get their hands broken. But it's destroying the community. The Kamara aren't destroying their communities with heroin now. They're destroying their communities by buying up buildings and filling them full of fucking Airbnbs and shitty spritz bars.

• 12:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know about this. I read an article about this specifically at the weekend because I'm, I'm fascinated with the Kamara as an organised crime group because, because of the TV series Gamara, which I adore. It's annoying because it's pure neoliberalism. I mean, organised crime groups, like I said, they used to destroy their communities with drugs, which is illegal. And now they can destroy their community legally through Airbnb. It's not regulated. And if regulations do exist, they're not being enforced. And I just think,

• 12:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  if, if Airbnb as a model has the potential to destroy communities, then it probably isn't ethical. Maybe it shouldn't exist at all. This week's podcast is sponsored by Aperol spritz and Airbnb. So I'm just back from a haircut. And it was a very successful haircut. I'm happy with the haircut that I now have, but that doesn't mean it's a nice haircut. Make my head look like an Airbnb in Tenerife. And I'm perfectly okay with that because I don't like standing out. I don't want a haircut that's so shit that people look at me and go, look at the state of his haircut. And I don't want a haircut that's so nice that someone's gonna speak to me about my haircut.

• 13:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  I just want live, laugh, love. That's it. Ignore my head, please. I am not interesting. Don't engage in conversation. There's someone over there with a much more interesting haircut. Have a chat with them, please. But you're drinking an Aperol spritz. You must be a highly social individual with tons of friends. No, I'm drinking an Aperol spritz on my own.

• 13:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't want to talk to you.

• 14:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  So for this week's podcast,

• 14:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  this isn't going to be a phone call podcast. But also it's not, it's not a podcast about any one singular thing. This week's podcast, it's, it's a chapter in the novel. It's a chapter in the novel that is this podcast. It's a meditative short story. I want to speak about all the things I said to my barber during my haircut. And all of the things I couldn't say to my barber during my haircut.

• 14:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because you know about me and fucking haircuts. It's not my comfort zone. The fear of being trapped in incredibly awkward small talk. And also, the barber shop itself is already quite overstimulating because you have multiple conversations going on. Then you're kind of, you're stuck rigidly in the chair because you have to look ahead. You've got that cape on. So you have to kind of really sit still while you're speaking. Can't move your hands. And then the big one is, you can't get up and leave. If your hair is half cut. I mean, you can if you like, but I'm not walking out into the street with half a haircut. So I have to stick it through

• 15:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  until the end. I'm never going to ask a barber not to speak. It's just against the culture. That is not our culture. Chatting and small talk, it's a big part of Irish culture. And it's very difficult to find a way to ask for silence without the other person being offended. It's a bit like turning down a pint. If someone offers you a fucking drink in Ireland, it's impossible to say no without the other person getting offended. You have to lie, say you're on antibiotics. And barbers, in my experience, tend to be highly extroverted individuals. Not all barbers, of course. I'm, I'm sure you're going to have your neurodivergent barbers, but it's not really a job that suits neurodivergent people. There are people who,

• 16:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  whose nervous systems regulate, who experience a feeling of safety from small talk, banter, gossip, crack, people who, who don't like being by themselves. People who really seek out external stimulation from, from other human beings. Highly extroverted, highly neurotypical. I mean, I'd fucking love to be that way. Jesus Christ. I'd love it. Now, yes and no. Yes and no. People like that, who I do know, they'll often say things like, I just had to get out of the house. What do you mean you had to get out of the house? I just got mad by myself. I just got mad on my own. I just had to get out and see someone. And I know a few people like

• 16:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  that. And they, it's a wonderful lesson on the diversity of just being a human being. Being by themselves with their own thoughts doesn't feel safe or feels overstimulating. So they seek stimulation from outside in order to feel happy. Whereas with me, my feeling of safety, happiness, stimulation, it's very internal. It's the conversations that are, that I'm having with myself, my own interests, my time by myself. And external stimulation, conversations with other people, I can do it. But it's not my comfort zone. And eventually, it's too much and

• 17:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  I have to escape. So when I sit down with any barber, especially if, if they're a new barber, a barber I've never been with, I have to ask myself, is this person okay with facts? What type of conversation are we going to have here? Is this going to be a relational conversation? Or is it going to be a conversation about ideas? More and more, the research, the modern research that I look at around autism, the scientific papers are taken from the lived experience of autistic people, rather than it being neurotypical doctors observing the fucking behaviour of autistic people. There appears to be a difference in the sense of

• 18:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  intrinsic reward that neurodivergent people get and neurotypical people get from conversation. Different goals of the outcomes of conversation, of small talk, particularly between strangers. For years, I read autistic people have difficulty with small talk because autistic people tend to go on monologue about facts. Bullshit. That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm trying to make the conversation more interesting. I never want to monologue about something that another person isn't interested in to the point that they're uncomfortable or bored. I never want to do that. But I can tend to try and push conversations towards interesting topics or

• 18:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  ideas as soon as possible. Because that's the intrinsic reward for me. If I can get a game of tennis going with somebody and we're sharing interesting facts, and then they're adding to my fact, or going, fuck it, did you know this? I didn't know that. Did you know this? Wow. And what about this? I love that. The conversation is now, it's a creative act. We're writing a story together. There's purpose. And the purpose of this conversation is we're speaking about ideas and we're writing a little collaborative story here. If I meet a person who's into that, fucking great. Then we're having a great chat. But then there's another completely different type of conversation, which is relational. What did you do last night? Oh, I went to this pub.

• 19:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, who was there? Oh, this person was there. Oh, I know them. Do you know what happened this time when I went there? No. Do you know that person? I do indeed. How do you know them? Like, if I had to sum up neurotypical conversation that I've observed from a distance throughout my life, the ultimate goal of a good neurotypical conversation between two strangers, like if you overhear it at an airport or something, the ultimate goal of a successful neurotypical conversation is if it can end with one person saying, small world, small world. That means that those two people have had a relational conversation to the point that they've narrowed

• 20:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  it down, that they both know the same person. No ideas were discussed. They didn't speak about concepts. Facts weren't exchanged, but the two people connected over relations. So the intrinsic reward there is about human connection. Whereas my intrinsic reward comes from, did I just learn a cool new fact from this human? Or do I feel wonderful? Do I get, do I feel really good that I was able to give this person a fact that I know has fucking changed their day? And I love looking at conversations that way because it brings in the diversity of

• 20:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  human experience. There's no value judgment there. Nobody's wrong. Like, there's a snobbish way of looking at that where it's like, what's that fucking quote? Great minds discuss ideas and average minds discuss people. Bollocks. Some people just find it more intrinsically rewarding and safer when they're speaking to another person if they can find connection. But also, if two people are having a chat and they want to be about ideas or facts, those two people aren't weirdos or nerds or freaks or boring. Why am I scared to go into the barber? Why am I an adult man?

• 21:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Worried, concerned, reluctant and avoidant at simply sitting in a fucking chair for a half an hour and needing to speak with a stranger? What's gonna happen? What's the worst, what a bad thing can possibly happen that's a threat in any way? Nothing. Awkward silence, that's the worst that can happen. So where's the fear coming from? My fucking lived experience. Being twelve, thirteen years of age and walking into a, walking into a group of kids your own age, who you only kinda know. Secondary school, fucking secondary school. In primary school, you knew everybody. And then you're thrust into secondary school and you only know some people. So there's new people and new groups.

• 22:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you get to secondary school, some people mature more than other people. So one group is having quite teenage adolescent conversations, but then this other group that are the same age or maybe a year earlier, they're having conversations that are still a bit childish. And those lads' voices have broken, but those lads' voices haven't broken. And that in itself is confusing. And you walk into the fucking group and interrupt the relational conversation with a fact or a subject that isn't being spoken about, and you're immediately met with ridicule. Or you do it in class. Like I stopped putting my hand up in fucking school. Can you imagine the questions I'd have been asking in fucking school when I was listening to the teacher?

• 23:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like I can remember the first time this ever happened and it, the fact that I was five and I still remember it now and I still remember the pain. We had a substitute teacher, adult woman. And we're all like five and for some reason she mentioned John Lennon. I don't know why, whatever she was speaking about, she mentioned John Lennon or his song Imagine or whatever. I'm five, I put my hand up and I said, "Miss, miss." She goes, "What? Did you know that the person who shot John Lennon was called Mark David Chapman?" And she paused and said to the class, "Well, thank you for that useless piece of information." And my heart sank and everybody fucking laughed.

• 23:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I shouldn't remember that at this age, you see. I shouldn't remember that exact moment when I was fucking five, when a teacher did that. Bringing up the, the fact that the name of the person who shot John Lennon obviously wasn't relevant to the context in how the teacher was speaking about John Lennon. Her name was Mrs. Lahane. What a fucking prick. What a fucking prick you are to do that to a five-year-old. A five-year-old can say nothing wrong. No contribution from a five-year-old is ever wrong or worthy of being shamed or laughed at by an entire fucking class. I've had a lot of those experiences throughout my entire life. Okay. Where I misread whatever the fuck is happening in a conversation, I step in with a fact

• 24:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  and if the people are not receptive of that fact, it's taken as an insult. You're looked at strange. It's not that deep. What a weirdo. And all of that hurts like fuck because it's rejection. It's rejection and a reminder that you're strange and weird and an outsider. And unfortunately, when you step into one of those relational fucking conversations where there's a group of people making relations and you step in and you become the outsider with your little weirdo act, sadly, the group dynamic strengthens when they exclude you. Now they've all bonded about how they all have something in common and now they're

• 25:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  all laughing at you. And by laughing at you and excluding you and calling you a weird freak, that makes their bond stronger and the person who's leading it becomes the leader of that group. So unfortunately, I carry the pain of that when I walk into barber shops. Even though like if someone tried to pull that shit with me now, tried to pull a "it's not that deep, you think too much" or weirdo, I'm gonna assert myself with that person immediately because I refuse to be mistreated if the thing that I'm doing isn't like mean. If my speech isn't harmful or designed to make a person uncomfortable or isn't intended to hurt someone, then I'm not gonna accept it if someone tries to shame me for it.

• 26:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I'm better at reading things now. It's like a bit of a gay dare where you learn to read very quickly if a person is gonna be receptive of interesting facts or not during small talk, a stranger. So when I sat down with the barber, the first thing the barber said to me was, "Well, what type of haircut do you want?" Now, I didn't say I want my haircut to be like a fucking Airbnb. I said, "Give me what I have now, but shorter." "How long is it?" And I said, "About six weeks. Don't wanna come back for about six weeks." And then he says to me, "I'm really sorry, but you're gonna have to wash your own hair." And bit taken aback. See, when you go into the barber's, in, in front of you, there's a little basin and

• 26:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  you stick your head forward and they rinse your hair really quickly to make it easier to cut. But my barber goes, "You're gonna have to wash your own hair." And then he lifts up his hand and his right hand is in a bandage. So I go, "Oh, fuck. Are you okay? What's going on?" I assumed he'd cut himself with a scissors or something and he goes, "Oh, no, no, it's grand, it's just barber's hand." So then immediately for me, it's like dynamite goes off in my head. What the fuck is barber's hand? What is barber's hand? This is, this is new. I'm very curious to know what the fuck barber's hand is now. So I go, "What, what, what, what's barber's hand?" And then he goes, "Ah, look, it's just a bit swollen.

• 27:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ah, hairs get stuck in the skin, it's just a bit swollen." Now that answer, I knew I was dealing with someone now who, we're not gonna have a facts-based conversation. The facts-based conversation person is gonna tell me everything about barber's hand. They'd be really happy that a person is curious enough to care about fucking barber's hand and then they'd explain to me in detail what the fuck barber's hand is. This fella didn't do that. He brushed it off and instead said, "Ah, it's just hairs get into the skin, it's a bit swollen." Now, maybe he's sick. Maybe he's sick of telling everybody specifically what's wrong with his hand. But I don't take the risk. I don't push further and I park it in my head and I say, "Well, if he's not gonna tell

• 28:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  me what the fuck barber's hand is, remember it, cause you're gonna look it up later." Yeah, yeah, so look, if it's all right, wash your own hair, I'm really trying to keep it dry. I need to make sure it's gonna be healed because I'm going to the Canary Islands in September. Right, he's talking about holidays. He's talking, it's, "I have a barber who's talking about holidays." This person wants a relational conversation. This is not gonna be facts-based, this isn't gonna be ideas, the sharing of information. He's just told me that he's going to the Canary Islands in a month so that I'm gonna say, "No fucking way, I was there. Where, where are you going?" Which is what I did say. What I didn't say was, the Canary Islands is actually quite interesting right now because,

• 29:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  as you know, look, it's, it's a territory of Spain, but it's off the west coast of Africa and the Canary Islands, it's one of the, it's one of the examples that we have of the complete genocide and eradication of a population of people. The Guanche people were the indigenous people of, of the Canary Islands and they were eradicated entirely by the Spanish in the fourteen hundreds. Their genocide and slavery became like a blueprint for what was to happen in, in the century afterwards with the North Atlantic slave trade. No Guanche people exist anymore. They're completely gone.

• 29:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  All we have are traces of their DNA in some of the Spanish population through the matrilineal DNA, but that's it, they're gone. We have artifacts, we have some stories from the mythology that was recorded by Spanish colonizers, but that's it, they're gone. And the Canary Islands itself, it's a gigantic, it's a resort. It, it is a resort island built on fucking genocide. And why it is relevant right now at this very moment is because of what happened a couple of weeks ago in Suta, there in North Africa.

• 30:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Suta, which is just at the tip of Morocco, is Spanish, technically Spanish soil, European soil technically, even though it's in North Africa and it's tiny. And a couple of weeks ago, fifty thousand Moroccan immigrants crossed the border and arrived in Suta. It was unprecedented. It was strange.

• 30:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  It looked deliberate. There appeared to have been an online disinformation campaign. Like these Moroccan migrants, when, when they crossed the border into Suta, they looked so happy.

• 31:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  They, that's what breaks my heart when I, when I, when I see migrants crossing into Europe, either on the beach or when they went into Suta. They're just young people who look so happy. They think that the people of Europe are thrilled to see them.

• 31:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And as if they don't know about the racism they're about to fucking face. The young migrants that went into Suta were crossing a finish line. Several of them died and drowned. But when the journalists went to the, when they spoke to the migrants, it was clear that there was an online disinformation campaign for about a month previously, where a lot of those young migrants genuinely believed that there was some little loophole whereby if they managed to get to Suta, they would instantly receive European citizenship. So somebody had spread this disinformation campaign. There's a plausible theory that what happened there a couple of weeks ago with fifty thousand

• 32:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  migrants from Morocco suddenly arriving in Suta was a form of nonlinear warfare against Spain by Israel and the US. Israel hates Spain.

• 32:24Blindboy Boatclub?

  Spain are, as a large European country, are very outspoken against Israel.

• 32:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the same, Ireland are as well. Ireland are quite outspoken about Israel. When Spain speak out about Israel, it rubs them up a very certain way.

• 32:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  The very certain way that it rubs Israeli leaders up is hypocrisy. In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair, tweeted, "Let's make a deal. We won't fund NGOs in your country calling you to give away Suta, and you stop funding NGOs in our country calling us to give away Judea and Samaria", which is the West Bank. So Israel's issue with Spain is, "We just wanna fucking do what you did. We just wanna fucking do what ye did. That's all we're doing, you colonizing cunts. Don't ye call us out, because we just wanna do what ye did. Why do ye get to do it and we don't get to do it?"

• 33:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  That business that happened there in Suta, it does look fucking dodgy. That many migrants arriving at once, the disinformation campaign, the footage of... Morocco too. Morocco is aligned with Israel. The footage of Moroccan military vehicles, I believe, or Moroccan police vehicles offloading certain people, saying, "Look, cross the border", it was an attempt to throw Spain into crisis. And it worked, because then you had the right-wing Israeli and US-aligned fascist government of Italy with your one fucking Maloney. She then, she closed the borders with Spain.

• 34:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  The Schengen Agreement, whereby you can pass from Spain to Italy without a passport, she cut that. So this looked like some type of fucking coordinated US, Israel, and then a phone call to Italy shit to create a crisis for Spain, and that's what happened. But the Canary Islands, right?

• 34:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's what Israel and the US are trying right now to do to Gaza. People live on the Canary Islands, but it is, it's tourism.

• 34:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a resort island. Its economy is tourism.

• 34:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the Canary Islands are an example of the indigenous population were fully, full genocide. One of the examples where you can actually go. Unfortunately, the indigenous people, the Guanche people of the Canary Islands are not with us anymore, because the Spanish did an entire ethnic cleansing genocide on them in the 1500s, and then turned their island into what is now a tourist resort. And that is the current US and Israeli plan for Gaza. In 2025, The Washington Post got their hands on a leaked Gaza redevelopment plan.

• 35:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this is where Trump and Netanyahu want to turn Gaza into the Riviera, the Gaza Riviera. Any Palestinian people left living there, they wouldn't own money, they'd own these digital tokens. And it's been handed over to this quote-unquote "Board of Peace", Tony Blair is involved. The plan for Gaza is, in 20 years' time, it's gonna become like Dubai. It won't be a home for Palestinian people, it'll be

• 36:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  one of these just weird, soulless international cities where you can go and not pay any tax, and only billionaires can live there. Like Dubai, a site of genocide that would become a holiday resort for the wealthy. And that's actually what the Canary Islands is. When you look at the history of the Canary Islands, even though we think of it as "fucking lovely Canary Islands, a place to go for a holiday", the people there were fully genocided, and it's a resort built on a graveyard. And that pisses off Israel, because you see, at least with us, with the Irish, the Israeli, like, we didn't colonize people. So we're going, "Hold on a second.

• 36:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  What the Brits did to us is reminding us a bit of what you're doing to the Palestinians. But with the Spanish, it's you fucking hypocrites. Stay out of our affairs. We just wanna copy what you did, you hypocrites. And if you're so high and mighty then, why do you have territory called Suta in North Africa? Or territory called the Canary Islands? If we are such bad colonizers, what the fuck are you doing in Spain? Maybe we'll upset that apple cart, will we?" But I did not say that to my barber when he brought up the Canary Islands. Instead, I said, "Fuck, you're going to the Canary Islands." "Oh my god, that's beautiful."

• 37:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then he goes, "Yeah, I was there last year with my girlfriend, going again, hoping this hand fucking hand gets better, but going again this year." And I said, "What part were you in?" And then, I can't remember the area that he said, but he, he said, "We were in the quieter part." And then he went, "Because, do you know what? It can get a bit dodgy." And I'm like, "What do you mean?" "Well, all the nightclubs, all the nightclubs are there, and you know, you can't walk past without people trying to sell you coke. All the coke dealers are out there." So then I go, "Brilliant, okay, relational conversation. I'm gonna tell him the story about when my friend tried to buy coke in Spain. And now we can bond, we can bond on the common relational theme of purchasing cocaine in Spain.

• 38:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  If I get him relaxed enough, I might even be able, if I, no, if I gain his trust enough through this story, then I can safely drop a couple of appropriate facts to keep me interested. And then we'll find the middle ground between relational conversation and then me being able to drop relevant facts, not too insane, without me looking like a lunatic." And of course, my attempt went fabulously fucking tits up. Let me do an Ocarina pause, because this is too ridiculous. I need to do an Ocarina pause before I tell you how weird this went. First off Patreon, this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office.

• 38:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's how I fucking pay for my electricity. It's how I purchase haircuts. This is my full-time job. And this is a listener-funded podcast. So if you enjoy listening to this podcast, please consider contributing directly via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theyblindbypodcast. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint? Would you buy me a coffee? Well, you can do it digitally. That's all I want, the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free, because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. Whether you pay or not, I get to earn a living.

• 39:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  What more could you ask for? It's a wonderful model. So that's patreon.com/theyblindbypodcast. And if you're a new patron, don't do it on the app on your iPhone, because Apple will take 30%. Try and do it in a browser, please. Also, it keeps us independent. I'm not beholden to advertisers. I mean, obviously, this episode is not sponsored by fucking Aperol Spritz and Airbnb. But even, even speaking in that way about two large brands like that makes this podcast toxic for a huge amount of other brands that are just gonna be like, "No, fuck off on that advertising on his podcast." Well, fuck off, grand, we don't need you.

• 40:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  We're listener-funded over here, all right? Okay, Ocarina, I don't have an Ocarina, I've got some chewing gums. I'm gonna spin some chewing gums and rattle them. The fucking sun is setting outside here.

• 40:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Bollocks. If it was tomorrow fucking night, I'd see the solar eclipse. There's a, there's a solar eclipse tomorrow.

• 40:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  What a shame I'm not recording this in the smack-bang in the middle of that fucking solar eclipse. I'd have a beautiful, it's this time tomorrow, and I'd have the best view of it here in my fucking office. Bollocks. Not gonna happen for another 90 years. But anyway, should the Starlings be with us very soon.

• 41:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  I can see some seagulls. Right, here's a bit of chewing gum, and you're gonna hear an advert for bullshit.

• 41:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Okay, upcoming gig.

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• 46:13Speaker 03

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• 46:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  I am gonna be at Electric Picnic this year.

• 46:49Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've been at every single Electric Picnic since 2006.

• 46:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's gonna be adults at Electric Picnic who were born when I did my first gig at Electric Picnic. What am I gonna do? Turn down Electric Picnic? Do you think I wanna be going to Electric Picnic? Do you think I wanna gig at like? No, like, and no disrespect to Electric Picnic. I like, I fucking hate festivals. Big, loud fields, full of people, highly overstimulating. I love the gig part. I love going, doing my show. But I go there and I get the fuck out. I did no festivals this summer. I don't regret that decision at all. Um, I'm gonna do Electric Picnic because she might as well, might as well.

• 47:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  So it's gonna be in Mindfield on the Saturday, in the theater tent, which first come, first served, basically. You either get a seat or you don't. And my, my live podcasts at, at festivals, they tend to have quite large queues. So if you really wanna come to it, try and get down there early. It's the 29th of August and I've got a brilliant fucking guest. Look, I know, I'm just being an autistic old man. That's all I'm doing. Festivals and barber shops, neither of those things are my comfort zone. But I do them anyway. I'll push through. Then we've got that UK tour. Wait, there's a fucking gig in Sligo, isn't there?

• 48:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  There's a gig in Sligo there.

• 48:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Um, is, is that November, is it?

• 48:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's in the Hawxwell Theatre and it's around November. And there's, there's not a huge amount of tickets left, right? And it's up in Sligo. It won't be that hard to find. Hawxwell Theatre, Blind By, sometime in the next few months. It's actually after my UK tour. Yeah, okay, so the tour, England, Scotland and Wales kicking off on the 18th of October. Fucking Brighton, Wales, Cardiff in Wales. Uh, Coventry at the Warwick Arts Centre. Beacon Hall in Bristol. G Live, Guildford. London is sold out. Glasgow, Good is sold out. Gateshead, Nottingham. And that's all happening in October. Fain.co.uk forward slash the blind by podcast.

• 49:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then my Australia tour, 2027, which is nearly sold out. Brisbane and Port are both gone. Um, so you're left with Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland in New Zealand. And that's gonna sell out. So if you want your tickets, get them now, please. So anyway, back to the barber shop.

• 49:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'm there in the barber shop and the barber goes, "You know, I, I can't wait to go back to the Canaries, but we stayed away from Las Palmas, that was it. We stayed away from Las Palmas the last time, which is the main kind of town in, in the Canaries." And he goes, "Yeah, it's just down by the nightclubs. Bit dodgy, everyone trying to sell you coke. Wasn't really my thing." So then I go for, I actually had the opposite problem. I was in the city of Cardoba in Spain and some people I knew were visiting. But Cardoba is the type of city where it's, it's kind of slow. It's not a big party city. You're not gonna see a lot of nightclubs, a lot of drugs. If you're lucky, there might be a bit of weed somewhere.

• 50:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  But I was there anyway and was out with some people. And we'd had a couple of drinks and we were having a lovely ni- lovely night. And then one of the lads, now at this point, a 12-year-old boy walks into the shop. A 12-year-old boy walks into the barber shop and sits behind us. And I'm in the middle about to tell this story about coke. So I'm, I'm there speaking to the barber and I'm thinking, "Fuck, how am I gonna tell him this story now about this fellow who was trying to get coke without saying cocaine in front of that 12-year-old child who can definitely hear us behind us?" So I decided I'm gonna spell it out. I'm gonna spell it out.

• 50:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I say, "So I was there and a buddy of mine, we'd finished our fucking drinks, right? Finished the drinks. And one of the lads was like, "I'm mad for C-O-C-K. Fucking mad for C-O-C-K." So he asks me and I go, "Look, I don't, I don't do that. That's not my thing. I wouldn't know where you could get it." And he goes, "Fuck, I'm mad for it." And then I said, "I don't know, ask some bouncers maybe. Go to the bars and, and ask some bouncers." I mean, that's what you do when you're abroad, isn't it? So he starts going up to the bouncers, asking for C-O-C-K. Now I'm looking at the barber and I'm not really getting the response that I'm expecting. He's a bit slower with cutting my fucking hair.

• 51:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  At which point I realize, "You haven't been spelling out coke, you've been spelling out cock." I realize this. And then I said out loud, "No, no, no."

• 51:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't mean cock, I mean cocaine. I was spelling it out because of the child. So I'd done it all wrong now. I hadn't been subtle at all. I'd misled the fucking barber and I'd said cocaine and cock in front of a twelve year old. The child didn't seem to give a fuck. Laughter was now afoot. Because I spelled the word cock and I went back to continue the fucking, the story anyway with the barber, but a bit more whispered. We'd bonded now over how ridiculous that was.

• 52:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I was in Cardoba. There were people visiting, so I was having drinks with a group. And one of the lads there, who I didn't know very well. We're all happy having pints and wine and this one lad has a nose on him. And he decides he wants cocaine after however many pints, but none of us are cocaine people. So he's like, have you any coke? No. Where would I get it? Cause he doesn't know the city. So we had to go, just look, go, go and ask a bouncer. That's, that's what you do when you're in a city. What hope have you got? Go and ask a bouncer and they might search you out. But Cardoba isn't really that type of city. So even when he went to the bouncers, this was an Irish lad.

• 53:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Even when he went to the fucking bouncers, the bouncers were like, no. Like it's around, but we're, you're not really gonna, you're not gonna get it in nightclubs and shit like that. It's just not that type of place. But like it's around. So this fella, I think he was from Offaly. He, he wasn't giving up. I imagine he had possibly a bit of a problem. One of these people, if they have a certain amount of pints and they get it into their heads that they want coke, then they are getting coke. Goes back to the bouncers. Where is it? I need to get it. Just tell me where I can get the coke. The bouncers look at each other and then they write down a, a neighbourhood, just a neighbourhood on a piece of paper.

• 53:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they say, look, if you're going to get it, you'll probably get it here. But it's 10 o'clock at night and this area, it's not really safe. But if you must, that's, that's where you should go. There was an area of Cardoba called Sector Soar, which is, you know, poverty, crime, you know the crack. Big tower blocks. It's the big housing estate where the gangs are that have the cocaine. So this mad cunt from Offaly walks up to this neighbourhood where the bouncers had basically said, look, here's the address. This is where it is, but be careful, you know, watch out going in there.

• 54:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  So this fella has courage from however many pints and just wanders into the fucking neighbourhood. And after about 10 minutes, he's approached by all the boys with the hoodies. Just hard cunts, the same as you'd find in Limerick, same as you'd find in Dublin. They're there in Spain as well. Little gangs of hard cunts who are selling drugs. And then he just says cocaine, cocaine. So those little lads make a phone call. And then what happens is the lads say to this fella from Offaly, this drunk Offaly fella. Come on with us, come on with us. The fella with the cocaine wants to see you.

• 55:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the fella from Offaly, he gets brought to this tower block, into the elevator up to the top and who's there is like the low, the kingpin, the top of the drugs gang. The number one. And he goes into this fella's apartment and the dude in the apartment speaks a bit of English and basically he's like, I, I wanted to meet the man. I wanted to meet the man who had the courage to walk into the neighbourhood in the middle of the night by himself. Cause everyone always says, don't come into this neighbourhood, stay away from it. And the Offaly fella is like, I just wanted a bit of coke. I just wanted a bit of coke.

• 56:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the big, big drug dealer fella goes, look, what do you want? Offaly fella says a hundred euro. And then the drug dealer fella takes the hundred euro and then hands the Offaly fella this little perfect brick of like pure crystal coke. Now I know nothing about cocaine, but this was what comes off the boat from South America before it's cut. And it was the private stash and the dealer gave the fella from Offaly this. He leaves the apartment and then all the young, the young little gang members are cheering him and thrilled and getting photographs with the weird Irish fella who had the courage to walk into their neighbourhood looking for coke.

• 56:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And, and that man then I believe destroyed the rest of the holiday. For the lads that he was over with destroyed the rest of the holiday and spent all his time in his hotel room doing the pure coke, literally just sitting in a chair, drinking, listening to music on a Bluetooth speaker and doing pure coke. I'm not into coke. Apparently that's what it is. I mean, I'd listen. Have you ever met a person, have you ever met anyone who has given you a, a convincing reason to do coke? Who has described an enjoyable time with coke like literally no one. It's like Aperol spritz. It's just, why, why am I buying this again? Friday night? What am I doing coke?

• 57:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  I fucking hate it. I hate it. It wasn't good last week. I said I wasn't gonna do it. Here I am. I'm buying another bag. That's every person I've ever spoken to about cocaine. That's their experience. Like your man who got that brick. It's not like, oh, he went out and partied. No, he sat in a fucking deck chair drinking cans for an entire weekend. And the coke allowed him to continue with the cans for 70 hours or whatever. Anyway, the barber loved this story. Absolutely fucking loved it. Roaring laughing. Actually, this is my, this is my second barber shop and cocaine direct experience. Cause if you remember,

• 58:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  about two years ago, I used to go to a barber shop. It's not even there anymore. I went to a barber shop where the, it was a cocaine dealing front. I used to go there because the lads were so rude. They just wouldn't talk to you at all. They just cut your fucking hair. And then the man, manager, the manager used to come in wearing shorts in April. And his legs would be cold and he'd, he'd stick the hairdryer down his balls beside you when you were getting your fucking haircut. And then the lads used to all fight with each other. Anyway, this new nice barber who couldn't wash my hair because of his hand. He loved this story. He loved the story about the coke in Spain. I'd succeeded in, that's very relational stuff there. That's how you have a conversation.

• 58:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's how you build relationships with another, with a stranger you've just met, find common ground. You see the hairdresser, when the hairdresser said, I'm going to the Canary Islands, right? But I'm not that interested in Las Palmas because the lad's pushing the coke. It's a bit hard. He's letting me know I'm not that type of person. And I got to respond with the, I have a similar type of story that relates to your experience. That also lets you know that I'm not that type of person. And there's your little neurotypical bonding. And then when I had him on side, I went, look, please, can you tell me what the fuck the barber's hand is? And then he relaxes and he goes, look, just sometimes what happens is if you're cutting a customer's hair,

• 59:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  sometimes their hairs, in particular the really small ones, they lodge into the skin between your fingers. And after every day you check and you pull them out, but sometimes you miss them. And when they do occasionally, it can like, start to like grow out of your skin and get red and infected. And that's what happened to me. I'm after getting an abscess. So I have it covered up. So I'm like, wow, this is utterly fascinating. And then he says, do you want a coffee? And I'd never been offered a coffee in there before, which means that my, my neurotypical conversation had gone very well. I'm being offered a coffee. So I said, yes, I'll have a coffee. And when he went for the fucking coffee, I whip out my phone and start looking up barber's hand. And I start looking it up and looking up photographs of it.

• 1:00:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it looks like serious business, very, very painful, but yeah, it's, it's an occupational disease. I'm fascinated by occupational diseases and occupational illnesses. Afflictions that are specific to people who work in specific occupations. Because you, you can kind of trace capitalism with it. You can trace the abuse of human beings in the service of profit by observing occupational injuries. But the barber's hand,

• 1:01:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  it's, it's also known as a pile and idle sinus. It happens to barbers and not hairdressers because of the short hairs. So barbers are dealing with very, very short hairs and sometimes they stick in the webbing in between the barber's fingers and they lodge into the skin. And often barbers, yes, they have to pull them out at the end of, end of the day. And if they're not pulled out, they can form an abscess, an incredibly painful abscess. And that's what this barber was dealing with. And apparently it's common. So he comes back with the coffee and then I'm gone.

• 1:01:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh God, can I tell him about chimney sweep scrotum?

• 1:01:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  Is this a safe space now that he's gotten me coffee to tell him about chimney sweep scrotum? So I say, Jesus, man, that's very interesting with your hand.

• 1:02:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know, to have this, this affliction that only happens to barbers. Now, I don't go straight into chimney sweep scrotum. I start off soft and I say, there used to be a disease years ago. It was around Bradford in England in the late 1700s. And this was called wool sorter's disease. Workers in factories, when they were sorting through wool for the textile industry, especially when they were starting to use the wool of animals that were being imported from South America, like alpacas, the workers would get the hairs of the animals stuck in

• 1:02:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  their hands, but some of these workers would die. He was a bit taken back by that, but I said, some of the workers would die because the animal hairs contain spores of anthrax. And it was actually through wool sorter's disease that modern medicine was able to really understand what anthrax was as a bacteria and as a disease. The barber kept cutting my hair and gave me an, an oh really. So he, he'd taken it in, but wasn't aghast at how interesting that was. You know, the first, the first ever recorded occupational disease like that. It was actually called chimney sweep scrotum. And then he goes, go on.

• 1:03:30Blindboy Boatclub?

  I said, in the 1700s in England. It's actually quite sad in the 1700s as the industrial revolution expanded in cities in England.

• 1:03:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  When the middle classes started to emerge from the industrial revolution and start to live in, in townhouses, they're all burning coal in their houses, but there was a tax introduced whereby you had to have multiple smaller chimneys rather than one large chimney. So houses now in the late 1700s were being built with multiple small chimneys. But what this meant, chimneys needed chimney sweeps. They needed a person who would clean that chimney. When the industrial cities of London started to get smaller chimneys in the houses,

• 1:04:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  that's when they started to hire small children to clean those chimneys. Small working class children between the ages of three and seven. And these young boys used to go into chimneys naked. Some of these kids were orphans. So these little kids would be going into the tight chimneys. They, they weren't wearing clothes because it was easier to get in without clothes and their whole bodies were becoming covered in soot. They used to get tattoos also, involuntary tattoos where if their bodies got cuts and scrapes in the chimneys, the soot would go under their skin and they'd be marbled with

• 1:05:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  black tattoos from soot. But anyway, these kids, these little tiny children, because of repeated exposure to carcinogenic soot and also the fact that poor hygiene, they wouldn't have been, they'd have been bathing maybe once a year.

• 1:05:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  The soot used to collect around the folds of their testicles and they would develop carcinoma, cancer of the scrotum and the skin of the testicle. And that was the first ever recorded occupational injury, occupational disease, a specific disease that happens a person because they are working in a certain occupation. And then the barber said, what does that have to do with my hand? And I said, Jesus, this is lovely coffee. Do you like the coffee that they have over in Spain? And he said, yeah, it's all right. And I didn't follow up with my, my fact about Spanish coffee beans, which is that Spanish coffee beans are tarifacto.

• 1:06:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  They're really shitty coffee beans that are roasted in sugar. And that's why they have that very specific bitter taste. He didn't get that fact. I did not bestow that fact upon him because he didn't see the connection between chimney sweep scrotum and his barber's hand. That's not a critique. This is a person whose means of communication is relational. And then later on tonight, he's gonna go home and talk to his fucking girlfriend and have a nice relational conversation about, there was a fella there in work today who kept talk, who spelt out the word cock in front of a child and then spoke about the cancerous testicles of Victorian children. All I was trying to do was cut his hair.

• 1:06:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then when the haircut was finished, I looked into the mirror and said to myself in my head, thanks for that, man. You made my head look like an Airbnb in the Canary Islands. Just what I wanted. So that's all I have time for this week.

• 1:07:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I actually wanted to do, this was gonna be a mental healthy episode, because I wanted to speak about occupational ailments, not just the physical ailments of an occupation, but the emotional ailments that can fall upon a person depending on your occupation. But we might come back to that next week. I'm off up to the Abbey Theatre tomorrow to look at some rehearsals for the, the play that's being made for my short stories, Animals, which is, it's gonna run in the Abbey the end of September, I think, for six weeks. I'm very excited about how it's gonna develop.

• 1:07:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I'll catch you next week. And in the meantime, wink at a swan, drink an Aperol Spritz. You know, but sheer fucking coincidence, but only an hour ago, the main Aperol Spritz drinking venue in Limerick fucking shut down. There was a, a lovely kind of nightclub slash bar on the river in Limerick City, like a really lovely location. Not only was it on the river, but it used to get the evening sun. Place called House, House Limerick, and it's after shutting down with 60 jobs gone. And that's, that's where people used to drink their Aperol Spritzes in Limerick.

• 1:08:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  You'd have tables full of people, wonderful evening sun, sitting by the decking, looking at the river, drinking their Aperol Spritzes. And now that's fucking gone. It's just, it's one of those places that when you take it out of the city, it could cause a collapse. And it was always busy too. It's, it's when you see a business shutting down and it's always fucking busy. So it's, it's just so disappointing that you had a, a lovely bar that people used to, it changed the, it changed the drinking culture of Limerick. Like Ireland is Europe, but we don't really use outdoor spaces the way that people do on continental Europe.

• 1:09:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  And we have lots of people in Limerick from like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, people from South and Central America who understand how to use outdoor spaces. And those people, they used to do a lot of drinking, eating and partying on the fucking river at that bar that's now closed. And it showed Limerick how to enjoy our public spaces because that's not part of our, that's not our thing. Our thing is you stay inside the pub or you have the beer garden, but we don't enjoy our outdoor spaces because of the shit weather. So it's a huge loss and 60 jobs gone. It's like someone gave Limerick City a headbutt and broke its nose.

• 1:10:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's up there because that's our riverfront. Now there's nothing on the riverfront, but Castellos is reopening. If you're a long-term listener of this podcast, you'll know that I used to go to a weird nightclub in Limerick City back in 2019 called Castellos, which is, it's a dive bar. It's a dive nightclub. It's the type of place you cannot replicate it. You can't copy it. It is what it is. A dark, strange nightclub run by a fella called Flan Castello, who's in his eighties now, I think. Five euro to get in the door, sticky carpets, very dark. The only music they play would be Nirvana and Sonic Youth.

• 1:10:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  And most importantly with Castellos, it didn't matter what age you were, it just, you just had to be weird. That was it. So you could be 19 or you could be 90 and that was completely acceptable. It was one of those fucking spaces. It shut in 2020 during the pandemic and now it's reopening six years later and as good as fucking seven years later in October, the smoking area is this fucking weird cage. Everyone's glad to see it back, but I don't know how they're gonna do it.

• 1:11:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  Traditionally, Castellos was an art college place, but seven years is a long time. You go to college for four years. So there's no students in the Limerick City Art College who've ever gone to Castellos fucking nightclub. So the, the culture, the culture of Castellos is gonna have to be artificially reintroduced to Limerick School of Art and Design. So if you're a student of Limerick Art College and you're listening to this podcast or you're about to go into Limerick Art College, learn about Castellos and its long tradition and association with the art college and go to it when it opens in October. Look at that now, I'm doing, I'm doing an ad for Castellos nightclub and telling Aperol Spritz to go fuck itself. All right, dog bless.

• 1:12:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  Wink at a swan, genuflect to a worm, blow kisses at a wasp.

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• 1:13:00Speaker 04

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