Outside The Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221b Baker Street, London

A man dressed in police uniform stands at the entrance to The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Note to the proprietors of The Sherlock Holmes Museum: The presence of a man dressed in police uniform outside a building, whilst perhaps of novelty value given the crime-fighting exploits of the character celebrated by the museum, may easily be misconstrued.

Generally, policemen stand outside buildings when:
A) A serious crime has been committed and forensic tests are being carried out.
B) The building contains rich and/or powerful people and the general public is not permitted to enter.

I would suggest that neither of these scenarios are likely to encourage prospective visitors to approach the entrance. I wonder how many Sherlock Holmes fans have been put off entering by the policeman.

[ Ozzie 1: Aw, bonzer! I can't believe, having come all the way from Australia for the express purpose of seeing The Sherlock Holmes Museum, we're almost at 221b Baker Street.
Ozzie 2: Yeah, we've put so much effort into organising this once-in-a-lifetime trip so the 24 members of the Brisbane Sherlock Holmes Appreciation Society can be here. I'm so excited.
Ozzie 1: Wait! There it is! 221b Baker Street.
Ozzie 2: Hang on. Isn't that a copper standing at the entrance?
Ozzie 1: Oh my God, it is! Well, it's obvious that either a serious crime has been committed and forensic tests are being carried out or the building contains rich and/or powerful people and the general public is not permitted to enter. Drat!
Ozzie 2: Sorry, guys, we can't go to the museum. Let's just go back to Heathrow and see if we can get a flight home. ]

Inside The Sherlock Holmes Museum

I enter 'Dr Watson's sitting room'. An old ham playing Dr Watson greets myself and a pretty Russian girl. Having established where we are from, he puts together a short staccato monologue in Russian, causing the girl to giggle. He has the manner of one who is a little drunk or quite mad. Or both.

'Do you speak Irish,' I ask.

'No, but I know an Irish joke,' he beams.

I feel nationalism well up from the pit of my stomach, as though it were a visceral force. Like nausea. (I recognise the same feeling I had in the British Library, where Séamus Heaney and Oscar Wilde are passed off as British)

'I'm not sure I'd like to hear it.'
The man is clearly a buffoon. If a black person walked in to Dr Watson's sitting room, would he ask them if they'd like to be called a nigger? Just, you know, for old time's sake, old boy. Perhaps he is actually is a survivor of the late 19th century, giving him more authenticity in his role as Dr Watson.
'Well, one can always try,' he says, not discomfited in the slightest.
I despise this man.
'I know some English jokes, as a matter of fact,' I say.
Revenge.

Actually, I don't know any English jokes. I only know subversions of the 'Paddy Englishman, Paddy Irishman' gags, where the Brit rather than the Irishman is portrayed as the fool.

Then Dr Watson loses interest in me, the simian Irish peasant from Punch magazine, and focuses instead on the pretty Russian girl. He commences a disquisition on languages in general. It appears I have wandered into a lecture on comparative philology.
'Now,' begins Dr Watson, 'people say Italian is the most beautiful language. Bah!'
Here he flings out his right arm in a dismissive gesture. He is clearly classically trained.
'No, no! Russian is the most beautiful.'
He rolls out some more Russian phrases. Somewhere on this man's bookshelf is a Berlitz Russian phrasebook. I know this because he never speaks more than one short sentence at a time and each new sentence is unconnected to the last. It is also possible that he is telling his Irish joke to the Russian girl.

'Closely followed, that is, by Portuguese.'
He disgorges a handful of short, unconnected Portuguese phrases, translating for our benefit. He is a Berlitz polyglot. Perhaps he bought an entire set of Berlitz phrasebooks. Except the Irish one.

' I was in Russia once, you know. St Petersburg. Beautiful city.'
Here he is addressing the Russian girl. He then turns to me.
'And beautiful women.' He stops just short of licking his lips.

If the Russian girl were my sister, I would give serious consideration to punching him in the face right now. Instead, I make some non-commital response and leave the room.

I wander around the rest of the museum. It's a poor display. And there is no sign of Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps he's snorting cocaine in the bathroom. You'd need something to get through the day working with Dr Watson.

Vanity project that it is, this blog does not normally include links to other websites. Sometimes, however, exceptions must be made. The heckler in the video clip below speaks the voice of a nation. It is a rather slurred and ineloquent voice, but it gives expression to the thoughts of so many.


http://www.yourirish.com/blog/2006/pat-kenny-heckeld.html

And what kind of man says 'thank you very much' after he's just been called an arsehole by a stranger?

Boy racer smashes land speed record

A 19-year-old from Navan has broken the Irish land speed record, according to reports from within the car customisation community. The Spanner believes that CCTV footage of Derek ‘Dicey’ Reilly’s 314 km/h dash down the N3 has been sent to the Guinness Book of Records for verification. Mr Reilly’s Honda Civic is thought to have outpaced a Garda helicopter which arrived on the scene.

An independent auditor from the car customisation community, James ‘Belter’ Geraghty, 18, was also present in the vehicle. He briefed reporters about the high-speed jaunt. Speaking behind a pall of exhaust smoke from his own running vehicle, he said: “Dicey had hoped to complete the entire five-mile run on the right-hand side of the road, but a few trucks got in our way. Obviously he’s disappointed about that. Still, 314 km/h isn’t bad considerin’ he’s only been drivin’ two weeks.”

Mr Reilly’s next project is to actually take flight in his customised car, as Mr Geraghty explained. “Dicey’s orderin’ an extra-wide spoiler that’ll act like a pair of wings. His Civic is highly aerodynamic as it is, so we’re hopin’ to take flight some time around January.”

Reilly and Geraghty have formed a pressure group, Boy Racers Against Tethers (BRAT). “How are we expected to race properly if cars with weedy little engines are cloggin’ up our roads? These small-engined vehicles have no place on our roads. And another thing we’re campaignin’ for is to have ‘donuts’ become part of the drivin’ test. ‘Donuts’ are a vital aspect of car customisation culture and there’s no better way of makin’ a quick turnaround if someone’s chasin’ ye,” said Geraghty, whose next comments were drowned out by the revving of a posse of disproportionately large engines.

Seán Kenny

Are tributes liquid?

It would appear that the current consensus is that they are. Every news medium I have consulted over the last few days (papers, TV, internet, teletext) has carried reports of tributes "pouring in" for Alex Ferguson on his twentieth anniversary as Supreme Ruler of Old Trafford. Cliché after cliché after fulsome cliché.
This apparent liquidity of tributes surprises me. I'd have thought they'd be more likely to be solid, like a pat on the back, if heartfelt. Or gaseous, like hot air, if insincere. And what do these liquidy tributes pour into? The giant vat of Fergie's ego?

Someone needs to update Myles na Gcopaleen's 'Catechism of Cliché'.

And, by the bye, as the first anniversary of this blog approaches, I would like to invite tributes to pour in. Come on, I'm not getting anything else published. Pour in, you bastards!