Thing 261 Give a Tour

Sometimes I wonder if I've missed my real calling in life... Tour Guide would suit me down to the ground. Someone pays me to talk, the same people who've just shelled out their cash, have paid that money to listen. I've got a captive audience for up to an hour and a half. I can talk shit for one entire hour and a half and someone will pay me for this... Honestly... Career change coming up.

I know most of my mates would pay me serious money to shut me up for a while.

Dr Frasier's been a tour guide in the Eternal City of Rome for the last six months. So he gave me some pointers. And by pointers I mean he planned the route, told me the information and gave guidelines on when to pause dramatically for effect. If we could have rigged an elaborate hoax, ala Weekend at Bernie's, he'd have hooked me up to a set of strings and run the tour for me...

I jest.
I love Limerick. Did I mention that fifty five hundred thousand times before? Very fond of my home city. So when Rizzla, Smiley and T-Field came to visit with Band Man, I decided that as well as partying, Christmas action and New Year's Eve, they should get some culture. You'll note I said; I decided. Poor pets didn't stand a chance. They were told that they were taking a walking tour for Project purposes and that was that. They're all too nice to object. Meanwhile, my boys would have cheerfully paid me not to force a tour on them. That is if they didn't just punch me in the head and leave me to sleep it off.

Charming chaps.

Seriously though. Right in the head. Slam.

It's funny how much you know about your city, and how you take it for granted. People visiting oooh and ahhh at stuff you've known forever. Stuff you've known so long that you're amazed someone else thinks it's noteworthy. Then they started ooohing and aaaahing, and suddenly I'm all about talking incessantly about William of Orange. Cos apparently foreigners think that's cool. Anyone else starting to think they may have been humouring me?

Honestly though. Limerick's got some cool history. It had a charter before London did. Before London people. Once upon a day, Limerick was a more important spot than Notting Hill, and Camden and all them other fancy places that Channel 4 tells us so much about.

It's also probably the only place (and this one needs referencing), where the name is translated into English from Irish, after the Irish had translated it from Norse. I've not bothered with the research to find out exactly how it was spelled, but the Norse founded Limerick at the Curragower Falls and called it Hylmerk, or possibly Hymlimeichakridcjkslkkllskskskkc. You'd never know with them.

Crazy vikings.

I'm not going to bore you to death with the full details of the tour (I can hear the echoes of cheers all around the blogosphere), but I was amazed with how well it went. Took in some of Limerick's great history and were in the pub in time for dinner/Guinness....

Anything that ends in Guinness has to be a success.