Category: Scribblings

  • Xmas in Xberg – Christmas in Berlin

    It’s Christmas in Berlin.  I’m writing from a small café in Xberg, as the rebels call it when they’re sure they are amongst friends.  The regime has ears everywhere, or so it seems to the besieged people here.  No one is prepared to take a chance. Berlin having tumbled from the Weimar Republic’s crippling debt…

  • 25 Things

    I found this hidden on my facebook page, and decided to dust off the cobwebs and repost it here.  This was written in January 2009, back in the days when you didn’t have to pay The Facebook Corporation when you wanted to share thoughts online with your friends.  It was the result of the only…

  • Tadhg to Tiger over on Friendface

    Greetings dear readers… This is just a short note to notify of a slight change to our internet presence. Facebook, despite appeals from all quarters, refuses to allow page names to be changed. This means that our Tadhg Cooke page cannot become “Tiger Cooke”. Slightly annoying, and not very consistent – in an age when…

  • Goodbye 2011

    Dear 2011, It’s been emotional. I said goodbye to some dear friends and close family. You bade farewell to some vicious dictators. What does it all mean? Does it need to mean anything? Well, some meaning would probably help, and would certainly aid our bid to get “2011 – The Movie” picked up by Hollywood,…

  • Pre-Chrimbolic Shows in Derry, Belfast & Dublin

    Greetings! We seem to be having some issues with our mailing list settings – some of you recently received mails that are months late.  Everything should be correct now, but we’re still battling the spam filters of the world.  It seems that as soon as you start to put images into emails the spam filters…

  • Deutschland 2011 – Dülmen/Münsterland Festival/Bielefeld

    German Tour rolling along nicely. Many contacts made. Many songs brewed. Bye-bye Münster! Hamburg next…

  • Kidnapped

    “Your True North” was partially inspired by the thrilling Robert Louis Stevenson story Kidnapped, which I loved as a little nipper. All the images of Georgian life and cities, and their modern equivalents, were flicking through my slide projector. Any visitor to Dublin will know its extensive Georgian and Victorian architecture – well, that was…

  • Tour of Eastern Yurp – April 2011 – Part III

    Note: To aid your reading, you may wish to check out the whole set of photos on Facebook. OLOMOUC In the morning we wake, and drive to Wien. Bratislava and Wien are surprisingly close together, so we’ve decided to drop our rental car back to Vienna before hopping on the train to Olomouc, to the…

  • Tour of Eastern Yurp – April 2011 – Part II

    Tour of Eastern Yurp – April 2011 – Part II

    Note: To aid your reading, you may wish to check out the whole set of photos on Facebook. BRNO Our driving seems to be perpetually punctuating by traffic jams in Praha/Prague. Just before we arrive we get done by the motorway patrol people – I don’t think they’re police, but I’m not sure. (I didn’t…

  • Tour of Eastern Yurp – April 2011 – Part I

      Note: To aid your reading, you may wish to check out the whole set of photos on Facebook. WIEN We had a welcoming party at Wien Flughafen (Vienna Airport to you and me) and were whisked immediately into the city, swallowed whole by history and architecture. Dave Redmond (double-bass player extraordinaire) and myself were…