Limerick

Limerick
After my final fiddle lesson in Kenmare on the Friday I headed across the country to meet up with Derek & Sarah who were over from Guernsey for a wedding. Derek is a friend of mine who plays and sings in the 'Dukes of Vazon' band who I have played with a few times... Sarah is the Dukes biggest fan and number 1 groupie, she also happens to be Derek's girlfriend. Derek is from Co. Kildare, which is the next county west of Dublin, and that is where I was heading.

I left Kenmare mid afternoon with the plan of driving half way, finding somewhere to stop for the night, and carrying on the next day. About 2hrs into driving I stopped for fuel just outside a small town called Adare. It was here that my van decided to break down. The engine wouldn't start - the starter motor wasn't even turning over. With the help from the guy in the fuel station we managed to push start and I went off to find a caravan park to stay at and then call the RAC out in the morning.

When the RAC guy arrived he thought the same as me - that the starter motor was bust, but that wasn't something he could fix so I got another push start and headed off to find a garage. It was late morning by this time on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend so I wasn't holding out much hope. I thought my best chances would be in a bigger city so I drove a few kilometers further to the city of Limerick. I tried 6 or 7 garages (leaving my engine on the whole time) but all said that they didn't have any mechanics working today and because it was an electrics problem it probably wasn't something they'd deal with anyway. A few of the garages gave me directions to a auto-electrician called Des Kennedy but despite ending up on the same street each time I couldn't find him anywhere... eventually I found a man in oily blue overalls working on a car outside what looked like a normal garage of a house, this turned out to be Des.

I explained my problem but he didn't sound very optomistic, I think he was planning on finishing early but he said he'd take a look. By this point I was getting a bit worried because I could see myself having to spend the long weekend sleeping in my van on a backstreet of Limerick, which I have been told has the reassuring nickname of 'Stab City' because of a previous spate violence.

To my releif Des removed the starter motor and took it to pieces and amazingly managed to get it working again... it took a couple of hrs during which time he had a constant stream of customers coming in. While he was working we got chatting and I asked him how he had become so popular despite being in a backstreet without any signs... he said there were 2 reasons. The first was that he was very good at his job, and for the second reason he pointed me to the wall on the other side of his garage where there were lots of press cuttings and photographs... it turns out that Des is a bit of a local celebrity, he used to play football for Limerick and played in some pretty high profile matches - he even scored twice against Real Madrid in the European cup... I have just found that there is a small article about him on wikipedia - click here.

Anyway... he got me on the road again and only a few hours late I arrived in Co. Kildare for another mad weekend... but that'll be another post very soon!