The absence of tourists in Nara, Japan has done wonders for the digestive issues among the city’s deer population
Nara is known for its deer
But tourists no longer appear
And it seems that
Is good for their scat
So let’s all give deer poo a cheer
John Moynes
AP
MORE to follow.
Behold the busy surface and inner orbit of Jupiter. There’s a lot going on. To wit:
Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot — a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini‘s likely notation of it 355 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter’s largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper right? That is a shadow of another of Jupiter’s large moons: Io. Voyager 1 discovered Io to be so volcanic that no impact craters could be found. Sixteen frames from Voyager 1’s flyby of Jupiter in 1979 were recently reprocessed and merged to create the featured image. About 43 years ago, Voyager 1 launched from Earth and started one of the greatest explorations of the Solar System ever.
(Image: NASA, Voyager 1, JPL, Caltech; Processing & License: Alexis Tranchandon / Solaris)
This afternoon.
Dublin Castle, Dublin 2.
Protestors of different hues demonstrate outside Dublin Castle as, above from left: leader of the Green Party Eamon Ryan, Tanaiste, and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar and Taoiseach and Leader of Fianna Fail Micheal Martin attend the new government’s first cabinet meeting inside the gates.
Earlier: First Contact
Meanwhile…
"Fuck off, Eamon. The big boys are talking." pic.twitter.com/wyB0H5cf6C
— El Weirdo (@EarlofWeird) June 29, 2020
Good times.
Kevin Murphy (left) aka Richie Sheehy aka’ Cork’s Biggest Liverpool Fan’ with Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool FC manager
Johnny Keenan (him off the telly) writes:
On a dull Wednesday evening in the middle of January 2018 in Cork City, only one person could have forseen what was going to happen to Liverpool FC.
Coming from a hard days shoot of a video for a song about his beloved ‘Pana’ (known to outsiders as Patrick Street) to the beautiful melody of Tracy Chapmans ‘Fast Car’, local boy done good was a bit forlorn with the news he had just heard on the radio.
His team had sold arguably the best player in the whole city of Liverpool, and maybe even Cork. Brazilian Coutinho journeyed on to Barcelona for a sum in the region of £142 million.
Always the eternal optimist, our hero retreated to his bedroom and recorded a little ditty called ‘Salah‘. The rest as they say is history.
A viral sensation that currently has over 150 million views online.
An anthem that would have ‘The Kop’ singing it just four days after he uploaded it . While he stood proudly smiling in the middle of them all. Dreams do not come any better than this.
Amazingly that given Sunday in January 2018 all his heroes mentioned in his song ‘Salah’ scored to beat Manchester City, in what was billed as the title match.
After a lacklustre first half that ended 1-1 , ‘The Kop’ came alive and started singing Kevin Murphys ‘Salah’.
In the next nine minutes something special happened. One after the other, Firmino, then Mane and finally Salah hit the back of the net. 4-1 up and the game all but over, everyone on Merseyside was asking CoutinWHO?
That day Klopp knew he had three of the best strikers in the world to build a world class team around. Thanks to the foresight of a humble Liverpool FC supporter from the banks of the Lee. KM somehow was able to get into the mind of one the greatest tactician and strategist in the beautiful game
Kevin Murphy would go onto be treated like royalty every time he passed by or walked through Shankley’s Gates.
He travelled to the last two Champions league finals, met his heroes, performed to thousands of his fellow followers, released ‘Salah’ as a charity single, and had loads more madcap adventures with The Red Army. He is sure to have many more.
Richy Sheehy aka Kevin Murphy aka Corks Biggest Liverpool Fan, fair play to ya boy. Milk it! as they say.
Last week: Win Nick’s Scouser Voucher
CeeV – Lonely Night
Trouble sleeping?
CeeV aka Caoimhe McAleavey (top) knows exactly how you feel.
The singer/songwriter from Newry, County Down, is a graduate of Manchester’s BIMM school.
She says:
“The song’s about sleeplessness, overthinking, nights out, basically tired eyes but a racing mind.”
Nick says: Insomnia blues.
Before
After
Um.
This afternoon.
Fade Street, Dublin 2.
RTÉ’s Will Goodbody tweetz:
Previously open plan, this is what the radical alterations made by the Market Bar in Dublin to enable it to reopen today look like. Individual booths for all customer groups. Capacity has more or less halved as a result, but it still needs the same number of staff.
From top: The Queens, Dalkey: A view of Sir John Hasler’s house in Dalkey by John Campbell (1757-1829)
The Queens in Dalkey is a pub which will not be opening this week. The pub is laid low with Coronavirus, staff have been made redundant; there is a possible unsightly end in prospect.
The Irish Times raised the possibility that it may be flattened to make apartments. The Queens in Dalkey is older than the Irish Times, so perhaps it is forgivable that it does not know its history.
Less forgivable is that the Queen’s pub does not know its own history. If it did, it would have more than enough reason to cry for its own preservation.
The Queens is Dalkey. More than you might think or know. I know more than most about it, so I’ll share it with you, but sit tight, because it is quite a ride. It involves shipwrecks, white slavery, hidden gold and a lot more besides.
Firstly, the key to this story is lost, missing in a typo. Like all the most important things, you wouldn’t find even if you were looking. That typo is there for all to see on the Queens’ website, under the history section, which reads:
Although The Queens was licensed to dispense alcohol from 1787 ( a date that makes it Dalkey’s and one of Ireland’s oldest inns) the origins of The Queens date back even further to medieval times when Dalkey was the commercial port of Dublin.
The Concert room of The Queen’s Royal Hotel, Dalkey, as it was then known, formed part of the famous “Castle House”, the “hospitable manor” erected by Sir John Mastor, who came to Ireland in the court of the Viceroy, the Duke of Rutland.
This very impressive claim gives a hint as to its history but would be a dead-end if you went to search further. The Castle House was indeed its name, but it was a Sir John Hasler who built this House. This is the story of how he came to do that. However, that story does not start here, it, as many good stories do, has its beginnings in Co. Cork.
On the 11th of November 1758, the HMS Litchfield set sail from Cork Harbour in a convoy of 11 ships, flying British royal navy colours, it was assigned to lead the squadron. Its mission was to transport troops to West Africa.
However, disaster struck after just 16 days at sea. As the crew bedded down, thinking themselves to be 350 miles from the African coast, they found themselves shipwrecked on the Barbary coast (modern day Morocco).
The resulting scenes are too horrific and repugnant to be repeated here. 220 of the 350 crew made it to shore, some women and children included, the others perished over a 3 day period as they tried to make it to safety. Those that did make it to shore were captured, enslaved and escorted to Marrakesh under the invitation of the Moroccan emperor.
You might ask yourself at this point, what this has to do with the Queens pub In Dalkey. Well, you could be quite sure that if that incident did not happen then, the pub that is no longer a pub would not be there in the first place. A Butterfly’s wing causes hurricanes, given enough time.
What happened next in this story, is that a John Hasler, an Englishman, was asked if he would act as secretary to the Governor of Gibraltar, the closest British port, to help resolve the crisis.
Having 220 British subjects enslaved in Morocco was not going down too well in Westminster. The Fleet street papers thought it a national disgrace.
John Hasler was sent into the court of the Moroccan Emperor and managed, to much acclaim, to successfully negotiate the slaves release after 18 months of captivity.
This success brought him some good fortune, but also the friendship of George Townsend, as in the Marquess Townsend, who was in the locale helping protect the Portuguese from the Spanish in the years that followed.
It’s the same George Townsend that became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1767. And who do you think he called up (it was pre-internet, so he had to ring him) to offer a job when moved to Dublin?
Our John Hasler.
And when he came to Ireland, where did he choose to buy?
Only Dalkey. The big shot and saviour of the Moroccan escapade. He was the Matt Damon of the day.
The Dalkey that he met in 1767 had seen better days. Although it had been a medieval port of significance, it had “dwindled to a few miserable fishing huts”.
