The Corkonian

A fire claims an abandoned house on the Carrigaline road in Douglas, about an hour ago. Just one of the derelict properties in the immediate area that seem to scream “burn me out before developers knock me down”. Get the finger out and build already? More of the same here.

Ah yet another example of life being stranger than fiction. A 22-year-old Polish man, perhaps disturbed by the recent loss to Germany and practical elimination from the world cup, decided to take all his frustrations out on a helpless motor tax disc.

The man entered the car park to the rear of Cork’s Anglesea street Gardaí station and jumped into an unlocked squad car. He then proceeded to lock himself inside the car after he caught some attention. You’d think that was already an extreme act. No, he then removed the tax disc from the plastic holder on the cars windshield and dined upon it’s round, papery gloriousness. Further to that (no it doesn’t get any stranger, don’t worry) he was spotted with a knife before a member of the Gardaí found a spare set of keys to the car and freed the man. Or not, he was then taken into custody. Unsurprisingly…

He was later sentenced to four days in jail. While in court it was noted that the man, who apparently had a difficult life in Poland, was having a hard time adjusting to life in Ireland. He is currently homeless, well, will be homeless again in a couple of days time. Instead of housing the man in an otherwise useful jail cell, I can think of a better sentence that involves a one-way plane ticket.

An unprovoked attack on a group of teenagers, landing one 14 year old in hospital, was carried out this afternoon on Farren street. One has to wonder… Apparently, the attacker aimed and then fired the shotgun out of the car in an attempt to ‘frighten’ the group of youngsters. Yeah, I’d say that’d do the trick alright. Perhaps actually firing the weapon was going over the line a bit though?

The car used in the attack was found later out near Watergrasshill. The mind boggles. If indeed this was completely unprovoked, it begs the question; “what was the guy thinking?”

Last time an crematorium was on the cards for Cork we were denied the chance of it being built in the aptly named Ovens. I always thought it would have been the best place on earth to locate a crematorium. Instead via Damien Mulley we have the news that Cork will get a crematorium that will be located on the old Irish Steel website.

I wonder will the residents of Cork Harbour get mad over this seeing as they’ve already got an incinerator!

Loathe as I am to report about anything “Big Brother” (and I promise you this will be the first and last time there is a semi-coherant post on the topic), the BB crew are searching for Irish people to be on the next series.

This quest, nay crusade for the next plastic paddy begins on Cork’s Patrick street in about ohh 12 minutes. If you want to possibly get on TV, make a complete tit of yourself, have several million people hate you then vote you out and lastly make a few ill-advised appearances on chatshows and seedy tabloid newspapers, then this is for you! The details are a bit shady as of yet but be on Patrick st in ohh now 10 minutes and you could be in with a shot at the limelight.

I can’t really tell you much more about the whole experience as in my charmed life so far I’ve only seen a maximum of 30 minutes of big brotherly fun. Would I go in and audition if I wasn’t at work? Possibly… Either way, Patrick st is going to be the place to be today to see every shape, size and colour of freak you could ever imagine. A Photo Op!

It appears that the Gate Cinema now no longer does late shows. This of course means that the ability of being able to go into town and have a couple of pints before a film is now gone with the Gate ending the late shows and the Capitol Cineplex being no more!

There’s a bit of a discussion on Boards.ie about it.

Ryan managed to get a much better photo of the sign up at the airport which manages to tell French people to be a danger to other motorists! My attempt at a photo is in the boards.ie thread and sucks badly!

Several weeks ago, I spotted a rather odd sign while driving out of Cork airport. It appeared to be advising English & German speakers to drive on the left side of the road, whereas French speakers should drive on the right! Since first sighting the piece of genius signage, it has provided me with chuckles every time I drive out of the airport grounds. I’m not the only person to spot it though. Damien also raised the issue which prompted me to finally get a photo of the sign this afternoon. Several boards users have also made the discovery.

I can only hope it wasn’t the cause of several preventable rental car pile-ups on the airport roundabout…

At this stage the work is well underway and is expected to be completed in November 2006 much to the delight of everyone in the city, well on the South side anyway! I reckon it’ll be finished during the summer but November 2006 is the date that’s been touted. Anyway the flyover is finally taking shape and Flickr user corksurf seems to have been down there last night to snap a few photos of the construction efforts. Last night was a big day for the project with the concrete beams arriving from somewhere up country. Anyway take a look at the photos of the flyover.

This is the Cork City Weblog a.k.a. The Corkonian, here I plan to write about stuff that happens in or is related to Cork. Don’t know whether it’ll be good but I’ll give it a try all the same.