"Nollaig Shona Daoibh" or Happy Christmas from Ireland......

..........have a good one if you can, me and the missus are having a quiet one as usual ( just the two of us), she has a cold at the moment and I have the far more serious man flu! 

Hoping you receive and achieve what you need this year, me I hope Santa brings me some cold hard paypal to feed the metal/resin/plastic addiction we all have!



                                   Of course it's a Christmas movie............

or maybe this is your thing!

So long England and thanks for everything, good friends, good people, good times,.............

.........,most of the time anyway, I'm going home!


2014 was in all honesty an awful year, depressing job, mounting debts, stress, high blood pressure, England becoming a less pleasant place to live for several reasons, bailiffs, anger, selling figure collection to survive, diabetes suicidal thoughts etc........blah, blah, blah!

So the other half decided that we should sell the house, move to a farm in the Republic of Ireland.........so we have and tomorrow we are!

I won't bore you with the drama of selling a house these days or packing up a man shed but we paid off the debts, bought a needs some work three and a half acre property in Ireland (lock, stock and two smoking barrels) and that was that.........

I'm going to miss England especially the friends I've met, the bloggers, the shows, the games, the best friends, becoming a Reject, the last few years of the eleven and a half years at GSK.............

So I'm off and will be back blogging regularly as soon as I can, painting, planting potatoes and turnips, becoming calmer, being Irish........

Currently still laptop free but using a pad and it can be a fecking nuisance, doing this on friends laptop where I stayed after the sale and transition, painted a lot before finishing work and hope to post in the painting challenge before time runs out, maybe one big post Curt?,.....

See you soon and a bit of cleavage at the end of the pictures as a warning for those who open this at work.............

Good friends, times and people......................

Happy Trails..................

15mm Modern Insurgents or Freedom Fighters and......

......well done to Katie Taylor who won Ireland's first ever Olympic gold medal, bloody proud of her!

....and now on to the insurgents/freedom fighters, figures are from Peter Pig (best 15mm faces in the business) and represent those people who cause problems for other people!

The leader........

89 years ago on the 22nd of August 1922.....

....Michael Collins, "Commander-in-Chief" of the Irish Army, was assassinated in Beal na MBlath (mouth of the flowers or mouth of the ford of the buttermilk).
He and his party had left Cork City at approx 6am that day on a tour of west Cork. On their return journey to Cork City, through this valley at approx 8pm, the party was ambushed by anti-Treaty forces, who had a roadblock in place.
After an exchange of gunfire by both parties General Michael Collins was shot and killed, dying at the roadside where a memorial now stands.
I wonder how Ireland might have turned out if he had lived?

Eamonn DeValera is reported to have stated in 1966:

"I can't see my way to becoming patron of the Michael Collins Foundation. It is my considered opinion that in the fullness of time history will record the greatness of Collins and it will be recorded at my expense"

Read about him here and if you get the chance see the Liam Neeson movie "Michael Collins".

Apologies for the lack of visits on your blogs, still feeling like hammered faeces, back at work today and will check out some blogs.