A Friendly Tranny and an Unfriendly Irish Pub

Italian Restaurant off Lombard St, San Francisco: “The Second most crooked St in America- after Wall St!”

During my brief change over in LA on Wednesday night, among the poverty at the Greyhound Station I spotted a very attractive, blonde, blue eyed girl who I’d assumed was the obligatory Sheilah, although unfortunately (for her) she was French.  She was also travelling around ‘blogging’, but felt that as I was only doing 2 months rather than her 10 I wasn’t doing it properly- ‘Putin!’  I slept from leaving LA until we arrived into Oakland in San Francisco and as we went over the Bay Bridge to Downtown I was treated to a guided tour by the very friendly Transvestite/ Trans-sexual (I don’t know the terminology) sitting behind me, who pointed out Golden Gate, Alcatraz etc- while the French girl smirked, but pretended to sleep.  It did make me wonder how it could be in anybody’s interests, regardless of how they ‘feel’, to have their body and hormones messed around with.  If they felt psychologically out of place ‘pre-op’, how could making them look like freaks possibly raise their self-confidence and self-esteem? Each to their own.

Anyway, once I’d got to Starbucks, posted my piece on the US Marines, and the frog and I had established where we were going, I headed off to experience the San Francisco public transport.  After getting off on the right St, but 600 houses too far North, I plodded down the Rd, across Golden Gate Park, to eventually meet up with my friend.  After I’d showered and changed, we headed out for lunch then went to the Golden Gate Bridge and for a drive around San Fran.  In the evening she had to go to a work function, so I strolled down the road towards the local pub.

She’d said it was Irish, but since every pub outside New York had claimed to be Irish (because, clearly English people never relax over a few beers.) with a neon shamrock and Guinness on tap, I wasn’t too fussed.  Even the Delta Force bar in North Carolina claimed to be Irish, but I don’t think any pro-IRA sentiment in there would have lasted long.  However, this one was the real thing.  At the bar I was chatting to some guy from Gallway who was friendly enough, and we were both quite happy to talk about Heineken Cup Rugby, compared to Southern Hemisphere Super-14’s etc.  Sadly, his mate Declan came in a bit later, and said emphatically that he was from ‘Derry’, rather than its full, ‘Londonderry’, which is one of those trivial points that is taken seriously within the rabid sectarianism of Northern Ireland.  There were a few exchanged glances when I said my background, and that I'd just returned from Afghan (well, I’m hardly going to lie, am I?), which increased as more of their little friends appeared.  In response I couldn’t help wondering why, exactly these chaps had all left the Emerald Isle with its booming economy (Ha ha ha!), when they did.  While I didn’t feel in any way physically threatened, I could feel the hatred (just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you) and I couldn’t help finding it sad that there was so much venom based on events hundreds of years ago.  While the Irish are happy to big time the ‘craic’, in my experience there is often a massive, undignified chip on their shoulder.  I also couldn’t help thinking about a long-forgotten, fellow Old Amplefordian who had also found himself in a pub with some Irishmen who hated him.

Robert Nairac was the last Captain of boxing at Ampleforth as well as being in the First XV Rugby Team.  He then went on to Oxford and Sandhurst, from where he commissioned into the Grenadier Guards.  In 1977, after extensive service in the province, he was an Intelligence Officer working with the SAS in the ‘Bandit Country’ of South Armagh in Northern Ireland, close to the border with the South.  On the 14^th of May 1977 he went to the Three Steps pub at Drumintee, as he was attempting to gather information on the local IRA and he was kidnapped by them.  They then tortured him, including castrating him, and eventually had a ‘player’ dress up as a Catholic priest (like most Amplefordians, Capt. Nairac was a Catholic) to hear any confession and administer last rites, although he never revealed any information.  They then murdered him and, apparently, his body was put through a meat processing factory, to preserve the pro-IRA PR machine the awkwardness of having to explain the condition that his body was in,  and no remains have ever been recovered.  Maybe he was complacent, self-destructive or just unlucky.  The fact is that he was murdered while trying to prevent terrorists from murdering innocent people in the name of a ridiculous dispute as to which particular Western European democracy the population of Northern Ireland were governed by- the United Kingdom or the Republic Of Ireland.

For his heroism Capt. Nairac was posthumously awarded the George Cross, which is equivalent to the Victoria Cross (or Congressional Medal of Honour, for my American friends) but awarded for action outside of actual war.  The week after Capt. Nairac was murdered, the SAS discreetly surrounded the pub, and sent in their 2 biggest soldiers, including a 6’7” former Army Rugby ‘2^nd  Row ‘ (the position for Alpha-Males) and a Fijian, in combat suits, but obviously with no unit insignia, which in its own way made it clear to the locals exactly who they were.  The SAS ‘Blades’ then proceeded to drink copious amounts of Guinness, chat with the somewhat alarmed locals, and generally made themselves at home.  The implied message to the players was pretty clear.

Over the years we in Britain have become fairly used to the generally accepted ‘Hollywood-ism’ that the Irish are just lovely, Guinness-sipping blokes trying to liberate themselves, as the yanks themselves believe they did, and that we oppressed them, starved them of potatoes etc.  Many people, even in Britain, find it strange that there is anybody in Northern Ireland that actually wants to remain British- so the fact that it is the wish of the Protestant majority is a bit awkward to align with the ‘Struggle for Freedom’ rubbish.  For their part, unfortunately, it was American money from donors in Boston, New York City etc that provided the funds for the IRA to operate.  This enabled them to buy Semtex plastic explosive and the full range of Eastern-Bloc weapons from Colonel Gadaffi.  The British had to deploy Browning .50 cal Heavy Machine Guns to Northern Ireland after they found themselves briefly outgunned by the IRA's DshKs.  The American funds also enabled IRA members to travel to such glorious places as the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to receive training from the Iranian backed terrorist organisation Hezbollah.   The result of this was that when I was growing up in the eighties the news every evening showed a continuous stream of terrorist atrocities directed against the British population and security forces, all of which were facilitated by American money.  Funnily enough, after 9/11 when terrorism stopped being so abstract in America, the funds dried up and the IRA had to accept peace.  However, there is still no lack of enthusiasm 'over the water' for killing British people.

The image of Hollywood Stars such as Brad Pitt and Sean Bean, both of whom should know better, playing romanticised IRA terrorists is something I have found disgusting.  All the IRA (whether ‘Provisional’, ‘Continuity’, ’Real’, ‘Official’) are is a bunch of unpleasant thugs doing unpleasant things while trying to hide behind a mask of ‘freedom from oppression’, much like Al Queda are doing.

The IRA/ ‘Irish Community’ very much like to remember their martyrs such as Bobby Sands who starved himself to death in the hope that Mrs Thatcher would care (Failed!).  However the real heroes of the Northern Ireland 'Troubles' were the 763 British soldiers who were killed in the course of protecting the British, and Irish, population from terrorism.  Hence why, whenever I hear Paddies, or yanks talking about ‘Free Ireland’ etc I often think for a moment about the fate of Capt. Robert Nairac GC, and all the other soldiers who died.

City of Angels.

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Greyhound Down!

Starbucks, Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles

Having smugly anticipated pushing out a good few ZZZZ’s once my newly found travelling companions had hopped off the Greyhound ‘wagon’ at Phoenix in the middle of the night, I was slightly disappointed when it broke down at 1AM in the middle of the California desert.  The fact we were still there at the side of the road 9 hours later was even more of a let down...

I was the only white on the bus and the other 40 odd passengers were mostly ‘African American’, Hispanics with a couple of ‘Native Americans’ for good measure, and the general behaviour reminded me of watching the Jerry Springer show.  The driver was a very strong willed, fat, black lady, who I certainly didn’t envy as she got the wrath of the passengers, particularly a 19 yr old single ‘mom’ who was screaming about her ‘mutha-fuckin’ baby, which was in itself an interesting choice of terminology.  However, it did cross my mind that, aside from the demographics and vocab, the total self absorption and lack of empathy was not totally different to some of the utterly vile clients I’ve had to endure as they’ve attempted to buy/ sell property in London- particularly the ‘trophy’ wives of rich banker/ lawyer types. 

About 7AM, as it got light, there was a bit of concern as there was no water left and there was the ever present diabetic needing sugar so, as much out of boredom as anything else, 3 of us went for a wander up the Highway to see if there was any life there.  We’d broken down midway between Phoenix and LA, 3 hrs from either, and while there was literally nothing in 50 miles in either direction (which I don’t think is possible in the UK), we were only 2 miles from ‘Desert Center’ which is the only ‘gas’ station and cafe in the area.  As the 3 of us, a black guy, a Mexican and me, walked off the Highway and across the car park to the diner we were laughing that it felt like something out of a Clint Eastwood film- and said we should send 1 guy in and watch to see if he came out through the window!

In the cafe there were just a few old, poor looking whites but they were friendly enough, as we had a spot of breakfast and then bought a load of food and water for the others.  While inside I spotted a familiar looking helicopter in a photo on the wall and learned that an episode of the 80’s classic ‘Airwolf’ had been filmed there- well cool!  Once we got back to the bus everyone was quite pleased to see us, and we waited for our ‘rescue’, after it had started to get pretty hot.  It was hot enough for the black single mom to actually endear herself to me with the observation that her baby was ‘Sweatin’ like a runaway slave!’.  No doubt if she was white, that would result in a jail sentence.

The new bus eventually arrived about 10AM and we then had to move all the kit from the one bus to the other.  A couple of young Mexican guys thought they were going to sit on the new bus while everyone else moved the kit- but I wasn’t having any of that, and after some gentle words of encouragement from me they got off the bus and started carrying bags.  

Once we eventually got going again, the first bit of civilization I saw in California was the edge of Palm Springs.  There was a vast wind farm which stretched in every direction and it struck me that the yanks didn’t seem quite as environmentally unfriendly as you might be lead to believe by the British media.  I remembered there was a little hysteria when President Bush didn’t sign the Kyoto agreement because, while he was committed to not harming the environment, he wasn’t prepared to sacrifice American jobs and, unlike plenty of other signatories, he wouldn’t sign something that he had no intention of adhering to. 

When I hear people talking about ‘Climate Change’ (previously referred to as ‘Global Warming’, until the hippies and Al Gore realised it gets colder than average some years as well), I’m generally quite sceptical and cynical.  All the raving lefties who have liked to bash rich people/ America for years (Ken Livingstone springs to mind) have now got a convenient new outlet.  If you say you’re going to make rich people in Notting Hill pay £25 a day for owning a Range Rover it can appear to be a little bit old fashioned, chip on shoulder, class war, but if you say it’s to save the environment it suddenly can sound noble.

Without incident we then got to the LA Greyhound Depot about 3 hrs later and as we went past 1 of the big storm drains that Arnie raced down in one of the Terminator films, and turned into the bus depot I was actually pretty relieved that it was early afternoon rather than 3AM!  A German couple I’d met in Miami had told me a hostel to stay in just off Hollywood Blvd so I got a cab up here, and as we turned into the street I was confronted by a huge rainbow on the ‘LA Gay and Lesbian Center’, and I suddenly thought ‘Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humour?’.  However, having decided that I'd stay there anyway as I'd paid for a night, I looked across the road and saw the USA Hostel, and I checked in- apparently everyone arriving here has the same initial pause for thought.

A night out in Austin before solving the Kennedy assassination...

Currently in the Marriott, Dallas bracing myself for another Greyhound beasting to California.

On Tuesday I headed into Downtown Austin in the late afternoon, had something to eat and then wandered around a few bars in the 6^th Street area.  It was election day, but it’s fair to say the air was filled with apathy, although there was coverage on all the TV screens, which seem to be present in every yank bar/ restaurant.  There have been a lot of political adverts on the TV and radio over the past few weeks, all for people I’ve never heard of.  The 2 things I’ve noticed are firstly just how vicious and unlikely some of them are such as “’Fred Smith’ doesn’t want you to have a job, he wants to give your job to China”, and secondly the fact that most of the adverts concentrated on individuals and you rarely heard which party they actually represented.  Having voted twice in my life (when I was 18), Conservative in the ’97 Labour landslide, and then in the referendum against Scotland having its own parliament (which I prophesised would be a horrendous, pointless waste of money... and lo, it came to pass...), I realised that voting wasn’t something I seemed to have a particular winning ability at, so I lost interest.  I only compete at what I’m good at.  I’m also not a Western politician or political journalist, so I’m quite happy to take democracy for granted, as my livelihood doesn’t depend on it.

I was waiting for my friend to finish work at 8 and she’d told me not to go to ‘Bikini’s’ bar because it was full of ‘trashy, slutty’ girls, so I thought that sounded ideal, and headed in there.  At the bar I got chatting to a guy and a girl who were marketing reps for Nike and were in Austin for work from Chicago, and they said “You must drop by when you’re in Chicago”... Stand by!  Once my friend finished work we all met up, along with some other mates of hers, and went for dinner at some uber-smart steak restaurant... the robust bill for which ended up going on the Nike expense account!  Payback for all the trainers and PT kit I’ve bought there over the years!  After dinner we did a pub crawl around the various bars on 6^th street, which is allegedly the ‘live music capital of the world’.  I’m not particularly interested in music, live or otherwise, but I did hear a convincing, live version of an all time favourite ‘Sweet child o’ mine’, which did impress me as that usually gets murdered by anyone other than Axl.  We also went into a bar which had an electronic rodeo thing to hold onto, which I obviously went on- and held on for dear life! We then got cocktails and shots at a bar where some particularly hormonal barmaid was giving instructions on precisely how to consume a drink called a ‘blow-job’.  I asked her if she had any ‘zip-ties’/ plasti-cuffs behind the bar to enhance the experience, and while everyone else laughed, she decided to leave us to it...

In the morning I was taken to get a ‘taco’ breakfast, which is basically a fajita (probably not supposed to say that in Texas) with bacon, eggs etc inside, which was well appreciated.  I then got on the bus for the 4 hr trip from Austin, through Waco and a couple of places I’d never heard of, to get to Dallas about 2.30PM.  Once in Dallas my plan was to find a Starbucks (as per S.O.P.’s) and then Google up some accommodation- however I couldn’t find one!!  I passed a McD’s, the other wifi office, but it was rammed full of loads of what the Guardian/ BBC would call ‘youths’, and I realised it was the first time in Texas I hadn’t felt totally safe and relaxed out and about with all my kit.  Once I’d strolled past them and down Lamar, I just walked into the first hotel I saw, which happened to be the Marriott (an expense I can justify to myself with amount of nights spent on Greyhounds!), got a room for the night (with a 30% ‘Government’ discount thanks to Army ID...), and then headed out to see what I’d come to Dallas to see...

While I’m fairly cynical about conspiracy theorists and theories, I was keen to see where JFK was shot, the ‘grassy knoll’, and make my own mind up.  The Texas Schoolbook Depository now contains the museum on the 6^th floor (5^th floor really, but yanks can’t count upwards in buildings) where Lee Harvey Oswald ‘slotted’ JFK back in 1963.  As well as the assassination, the museum goes into enormous, but interesting (to me) detail about JFK’s election campaign and presidency.  While possibly making him appear too good to be true, you could see why this apparently nice chap, with the credibility of a decent Military record in WW2 was so ‘iconic’.  Like most politicians, he said things that people wanted to hear, but he clearly wanted the best for his country (unusual, I know), and during the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 he demonstrated that he certainly had the moral courage to take the difficult option, which most pretty boy, liberal politicians (Blair, Clinton, Obama) might not necessarily have chosen, and faced down the Soviets.  As a result of the credibility this earned him with the Russkies, he managed to negotiate the first nuclear arms treaty the following year, from a position of strength.  He was, and still is, highly regarded by the US military (which certainly can’t be said of the 2 most recent Democrat presidents) a fact which was demonstrated by the Green Berets (a unit for people who hate drill and ceremonies) seen marching with his coffin at his funeral.

In contrast to JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald was a problem child born into a ‘broken home’ in New Orleans, who was brought up there, New York and Texas.  He served for a spell in the US Marines, where he had mixed reports.  Although he wasn’t a sniper, like all US Marines, as well as all British infantrymen, he would have learned how to shoot straight- the suggestion from conspiracy theorists that he was a ‘bad shot’ as a US Marine is similar to criticising the person who comes last in the Olympic 100m final as ‘slow’.  It’s all relative.  After the Marines, which he bluffed his way out of, he went and spent time in the Soviet Union, where he married a Russian girl, after he’d developed communist sympathies, which seemed to tie in with his attention seeking antics as a child.  A couple of years later he came back to the States and while living in Texas the couple received, understandably, a fair amount of attention from the FBI, as well as local law enforcement officials.  On one occasion he went to the FBI office and left a note for a particular Agent saying that if they didn’t leave his wife alone he’d blow up that building and the Dallas Police Department.  At some point during this time, he also got a job working at the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

In November 1963 President Kennedy arrived in Texas for a 2 day tour of 5 cities as a prelude to his campaign for re-election the following year.  As the President’s convoy was driving from Dallas airport, along a well publicised route, to a lunch meeting it passed the Texas Schoolbook Depository at 1230 and Oswald fired 3 shots at a range of less than 100m, which having seen the site from both ends, was not far off straight downwards.  He even managed to miss one round- mong!  The area where the vehicle was located is on a downward slope, right next to the infamous ‘grassy knoll’, which is just a tiny piece of grass that slopes a few yards up from the pavement, and is in clear view.  While the rounds would have more or less gone over the knoll from Oswald’s position, I suspect the acoustics could well have caused an additional echo to have come from that direction as well- although any additional shooter would have been in clear view of the Secret Service bodyguards, who would no doubt have turned him into ‘pink mist’. 

Immediately after the shooting, the Depository was sealed off as witnesses had seen a ‘man with a long barrelled weapon’ leaning out of the window, but as they were sealing it, Oswald walked past the police and out of the building and was reported as being the only absent member of staff in the subsequent roll-call.  Within minutes the police had broadcast a description of him as a suspect in the assassination and about 40 minutes later Dallas PD Officer Tippit attempted to detain Oswald, but was shot dead.  Oswald was then spotted running into a theatre and was pursued and captured by the police, less than an hour and a half after JFK had been shot.  A couple of days later Oswald was himself killed by another ‘village idiot’ type, Jack Ruby, who the police described as a man with aspirations to be a police officer, but not the ability.

My main thought on hearing all the suggestions of additional gunmen, whether on the grassy knoll or anywhere else, is ‘Why?’  This guy’s just put 2 large calibre rounds into him, what would be the point of an additional shooter firing at the same time?  It seems, much like the death of Princess Diana, that certain hysterical types can’t accept that ‘iconic’ ‘celebrities’ die in just the same way as everyone else- albeit unlike Diana, JFK was murdered by an idiot with a grudge against life, but he’s not the first or last victim of bad luck.  I imagine if both he and Oswald hadn’t both been in Dallas on the same day, history would have been somewhat different.

Right time to see what else goes on in Dallas, maybe I’ll solve JR’s murder next...