RoryQ

Found my new favourite restaurant at the weekend, on a trip down the country for a couple of days. O'Brien Chop House Restaurant Lismore, Waterford Restaurant It kind of reminded me of the Hawksmoor restaurant in London that Valerie mentioned above ... They do all kinds of old-school butcher's cuts of meat... Hanger steak, marrow, all kinds offal and huge steaks on the bone. They also do whole trouts and hakes and whatnot, intended to be shared. We got an 800g prime rib for two for dinner. They hand you the steak, and then they hand you a big bone-handled butchering knife to do the business on the thing. Deliciously rare ... I mean it was ridiculously buttery and tender. Served with hand-cut homemade chips (fries to you Americans) and little jugs of pepper sauce. Drinks-wise we had a couple of bottles of '8 degrees howling gale pale ale', new from a microbrewery in Cork set up by a kiwi and an aussie. Unfortunately can't see a way that many forumites are ever going to get the chance to try it unless they're not only in Ireland but on a trip way down to the south of the country (it's in County Waterford). The area it's in is a bit of a foodie mecca... Within driving distance are two of the best craft breweries in the country (Dungarvan Brewing and Metalman brewing) as well as the only michelin-starred restaurant outside of Dublin, based in the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore.

Drank a fair bit of bourbon over the weekend (yes, it's not whiskey or even tenessee whiskey, but it's close enough for government work). Eagle Rare mainly... Made Old Fashioneds using flavoured bitters I haven't come across before - a premium brand doing them in orange, chocolate, peach etc. Going to get to work on that Crown Royal next week (it's at my parents' house right now).

Some really good tattooists in Scotland these days. I love Richard Pinch's work (and his body suit by Filip Leu is pretty amazing too)>

Hmmm.... Looks like a London Met hat on the copper in the background? Basing that on the check pattern... although I think a fair few other UK forces make use of it.

Double post, sorry.

My girlfriend brought that article home :) . I was like "I know who that guy is!" And yeah, it makes a change from the usual sort of tattoo-related stories (The one that sticks in my mind is the girl who claimed she fell asleep during a tattoo session and ended up with a faceful of stars she didn't ask for).

I heard a Norwegian journalist on the radio this morning and they were saying that his first court appearance might be closed, but only because the police are still investigating whether he had an accomplice. After that he was saying the first order of business will probably be to determine whether he is mentally ill or is fit to stand trial. Apparently the maximum sentence he could get, if tried and found guilty, is 21 years.

Ha- wrong month for me! Oh well, we will still get to visit the Tattoo museum in Yokohama and stuff. But thanks for the digging dude, I appreciate it.

Thanks CaptCanada - I'm going to be in Tokyo in September either way, but it would have been cool if the convention was on (if it fell on the same dates as last year, or the days around that, then I could have gone).

What a horrific thing. Such a huge body count in comparison with some similar 'active shooter' type events.

I think if I were in Toronto and starting over I would definitely consider the guys at the Pearl Harbour Gift Shop, mentioned above by bigjoe.... I called in there when I was in town a couple of months ago - great set-up, and a really good 'take' on Japanese style, IMO.

Perhaps CaptCanada or another forumite could tell me, since we're on the subject of Japan, whether the 'King of Tattoo' convention is going to be on this year in September?

This is rather bizarre, but I was rooting through an old drawer in my parents' house and I found a bottle of 1982 Crown Royal Whiskey that my Dad obviously bought on a trip to Canada and put away. He was a tee-totaller and it's never been opened (the seal is still dated). I'm not even sure what it would taste like now...

Dragged out a bottle of 12 year old Canadian Club tonight... Quite good.

Finished 'Midnight Mass' (I cram sometimes to finish things) and on to Guilermo Del Toro's collaboration with Chuck Hogan 'The Fall'', which is book 2 of their trilogy. It's another vampire novel, funnily enough, although this one posits a basis for the vampire myth in medical science. Vampirism as a blood-born illness transmitted by worms which genetrically alter their host organisms. Cue team of epidemologists (if that's the word), fearless vampire hunters and the end of the world beginning with a mass outbreak in NYC. Sometimes I think I can see Del Toro's touch in terms of not so much the plotting but the visual pictures created. Some of the imagery is very ambitious and you can't help but think that a movie adaptation is a matter of when not if.

Yeah, same! They have four bars in Dublin (Temple Bar, Bray, Glasnevin and Nassau Street) and Covent Garden. Very clever business people as well as the fathers of modern craft beer in Dublin, really... I think they're still expanding the business- recently they started bottling their stuff and selling it in off-licences and apparently they've got a line of single malt whisky in the works too. I've drank in the Covent Garden outlet quite a few times... Porterhouse

Had five pints last night with a buddy that I trained with. He's a fan of cask ale, like me, and there's only one microbrewery in Dublin which reliably has stuff on cask - The Porter House. It took me a long time to come around to the idea of flat beer served close to room temperature being a good thing, but I think I'm there. Two we were one last night- 'Hop Head', an American style hopped ale and 'TSB', an English brown ale. When I was in the US last month drank an awful lot of various Goose Island beer. I'm normally not a fan of Belgian style wheat beers but I developed an odd fascination with Goose Island 312 (they call it their urban wheat beer). It may be a girl's drink but it hit the spot.

I've had the marrow at Hawksmoor before... And one of the big 900g steaks (there were two of us). Seriously good place to eat. Think I had it with some Meantime Brewing Company pale ale. A bit more cheap and cheerful than the Hawksmoor but my favourite place for breakfast in the world is Aunties and Uncles in Toronto... Aunties & Uncles Always worth queuing for.

Prices can be a funny thing. I notice a general parity in terms of price in the UK and Ireland by the bottle ... Around 50 pound or 60 euro for a 'good' Scotch. But then hop over to Spain and France and they may actually be cheaper again. Typically I buy my Scotch in the airports when I'm over in the UK- more for the selection they tend to have than the savings. Bourbon can be all over the place. I've seen Maker's Mark for sale here for 65 euro and then down the road for 37 euro.... I should have picked up some stuff coming back from the US last time I was over there, saw some Wild Turkey single barrell, 2 for something like 40 dollars. Islay whiskeys definitley appear to be the ascendant, which says a lot about the changing perception of them now versus in the past. I read in an old whiskey miscellany that the Scots used to believe they were medicinal or 'outdoors' whiskey, too elemental to be drank indoors. I guess what appeals to me about them is the sheer weight of the smokiness. Something like Uigdeail tastes like a cross between engine oil, iodine and a burned down woodshed. Somehow that's a good thing... A final recommendation on Irish whisky - How could I forgot Red Breast 12 year old....? Fantastic.

I always struggle with the whiskey versus whisky distinction (bad memory), but here goes- Personally I'm a fan of the Islay distilleries. Started drinking Ardbeg and Bowmore late in college. Favourites in this vein would be the saltier, oiler offerings from Caol Ila and the real face-melters from Ardbeg like Supernova and Uigdeail. At the moment I have a bottle of Uigdeail, a 15 year old Balvenie my girlfriend likes, a Lagavulin distillers edition (unopened) and (in the Irish vein) a 21 year old bottle of Jameson reserve. On my shopping list is a good Talisker and perhaps a Caol Ila cask strength. When it comes to Irish distilleries I'd actually encourage everyone to just go with a Cooley Distilleries product, IMO they make hands-down the most consistent and authentic stuff and are the only remaining geuinely Irish-owned company as far as I'm aware. Connemara is a stand-out, peaty but not as harsh as the Islay distilleries. Kilbeggan is a cult classic, recently been cultivating a soft spot for it. Recently I've been getting into Old Fashioneds and drinking more Bourbon. Not strictly whiskey obviously. I finished off a bottle of Maker's Mark a few days ago. Bit ubiquitous but it was a good price. Next up some Woodford Reserve or Knob Creek.

Just starting F. Paul Wilson's 'Midnight Mass'. It's an old-school vampire novel that he says he wanted to write as an antidote to pop culture 'tortured and sensitive' vampires. So Wilson's dirty, remorseless vampires are more in the vein, if you'll excuse the pun, of King's 'Salem's Lot' crossed with 28 Days Later rather than Anne Rice. Events are set several months after a vampiric takeover of North America's major cities. A priest, a nun and a rabbi (I know, sounds like the set-up for a joke) attempt to reclaim a parish church and fortify it against vampires and their human collaborators. I read a short story version of the novel a few years ago. One nice touch was that it featured a pair of drifters who had tattooed crosses on their faces in an effort to provide themselves with protection from the bad guys that couldn't be taken off them.

If you liked 'I am legend' then you might want to check out the recent anthology 'He is legend' by various contemporary SF and horror authors. Basically tribute short stories using various of Matheson's stories. So 'He is legend', for example, charts the events of world of 'I am legend' through the eyes of a vampire. I'm a huge SF nerd - Just finished re-reading Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of light'. Probably his best work. Quite elaborate, but essentially it's a SF novel playing with the idea of a pantheon of hindu gods who appear to rule over a far future human space colony. The 'gods' aren't really gods, and the protagonist that opposes them isn't really the Buddha, but Zelazny has a lot of fun with the idea that sufficiently advanced science can be indistinguishable from magic depending on who's observing it.

Well, I'm 30 and I live in Dublin with my girlfriend. Originally I'm from the country but I came to Dublin when I was 17 to go to university to do an undergrad in history of art and architecture. It was a bit of a nonsense decision to study it - arts and crafts was my best subject and I wanted to study that ... My parents wanted me to take something more 'sensible'. So we compromised on a history of art degree (yeah, I'm not sure they realised that was possibly even less useful). Spent some time working in bars and nightclubs when I was studying and I realised that I wasn't really cut out for a 9-to-5 job, and that I liked working at night and dealing with the occasional weird and wonderful incident. ...So I joined our national police service. I'm about 8 years in now, 22 to go. I started collecting tattoos when I was 21, living in New York City for the summer. It was a pretty crappy tribal band that has kind of been subsumed by a japanese half sleeve and that hopefully I will get around to properly covering up sometime. After that I saw an interview with Mo Coppoletta in London and started travelling back and forth to be tattooed by him in London over the next few years, gradually adding coverage. I guess tattooos are a kind of family thing - but funnily enough they skipped a generation in my dad. My grand-dad was tattooed (military days) and my great-uncle likewise (old school sailor). Mostly I spend my time working and in my down-time I do a fair bit of training (I like weightlifting, fairly rough and ready physical conditioning, some boxing, some brazilian jiu jitsu etc) and I really love craft beers.

To be honest I wouldn't consider going below my wrists or above my collar bones because in the course of my work i would prefer (and arguably am expected) to be able to wear my suit and tie and not be visibly tattooed. We have dress and appearance guidelines which don't expressly forbid tattoos - but I'd be naive to think visible coverage wouldn't affect how the public perceive me and how my bosses view me as a prospect for promotion. Maybe in ten or twenty years time things will be different, but for now I think Irish society remains pretty conservative when it comes to tattoos and I have to prioritize providing for myself and people depending on me over what I might personally prefer. I'm not sure whether that makes me at risk of sounding like a bit of a 'tourist' in a forum like this... But there it is... Lately I've seen some badass back-of-the-hand tattoos (particularly old school heads and skulls) and some neck tattoos from the guys at East Tattoo that have really blown me away. I think in different circumstances I would be up for that. In the meantime I have plenty of space to work with without worrying about it anyway- my back to be done next, for a start. After that I still have room to go below the elbows if I want, both sides of my ribs and my lower right leg. I hadn't even considered my armpits, to be honest, but (a) I am far too hairy for there to be any point and (b) I guess it just fundamentally doesn't appeal, besides the idea itself just being excruciatingly painful.

Very interesting to get the back story guys- I had no idea. Thanks. As far as the absence of Sally goes - I figured she was just away on hols and there was a guest editor, but perhaps not? First thing i noticed about this month's mag is that I knew the girl on the cover from doing front of house at The Family Business.