The Blindboy Podcast - Avocado Salt Bae and the Legend of St. Patricks Hole

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

St.Patricks day episode. Boiling hot takes about the Irish cultural footprint. Exploring why Salt Bae speaks English with a Limerick accent. And unearthing the legend of St Patricks hole where Pilgrims have seen Purgatory for a thousand years Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rip the skin from a Vincent, you diligent Fintans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. My voice sounds slightly different this week because I was over in Portugal smoking fags like a fucking idiot. I couldn't resist it. I couldn't resist the cigarettes in Portugal. They were like three euros or whatever the fuck

and like I don't smoke cigarettes in Ireland. I haven't really smoked cigarettes in two years. One of the only things out of lockdown that I like is I wasn't smoking cigarettes whenever I had a drink. But I went over to Portugal to do a bit of writing and those Portuguese cigarettes were irresistible because I don't know what it is, and I think this is a common thing. When you go abroad

and the cigarettes are like two quid your brain just says to you it's not really smoking you're in Portugal or you're in Spain this isn't really smoking well it is really smoking and was it worth it?

no it wasn't worth it I smoked 16 cigarettes and threw the last four over a bridge and remembered why they're awful. Smoking 16 cigarettes feels like climbing up, climbing up the side of a house, going onto the roof and fellating the chimney. That's what, that's what it feels like.

And that's what it's done to my nasal passages. One week later, if you were following my Instagram you'll know that I've been in Portugal on a writing trip I got shit faced on Sherry and nearly got hit by a tram because I was

following a dog I saw this dog, he was like a great Dane and I followed him trying to interview the dog because I got it into my head that he was the mayor of Portugal I went to the city of Porto and I slept

in the attic of a 14th century warehouse that was once used to store salted cod and I got frightened by a bright orange spider that was hanging from the rafters and I was drinking cocoa in bed and I spilled the cocoa in bed and I spilled the cocoa all over the fucking bed sheets

then I had to I had to write a drunken message to the Airbnb host that I didn't shit all over the bed that it was in fact cocoa and it was one of those messages that I should have just

fucking waited until the morning I just fucking waited until the morning. I should have waited until the morning. And just taking the bed sheets off the bed. They didn't need to get a 4am text to say that I spilled cocoa in the bed and it's not shit. Because I got startled by a fucking bright orange Portuguese spider that was hanging from the fucking rafters. And then the next morning I was looking at the message going, fuck's sake. And they just sent a message back going,

that's no problem, just leave the sheets out and we'll replace them. And then I didn't know what to say, so I asked them if they knew what breed of spider it was. They didn't write back to that. What the fuck was I doing drinking cocoa in bed? I don't even drink cocoa. I asked them if they knew what breed of spider it was. They didn't write back to that. What the fuck was I doing drinking cocoa in bed? I don't even drink cocoa. I don't think about cocoa.

I have no time for cocoa. I was after drinking a lot of that super bock. Portuguese lager. Which was alright. It's fizzy. What does it taste like? It tastes like a very stressed out pint of San Miguel, it's the only way I can describe it, it's San Miguel

but there's something extra in there and that extra thing that's in there it's not pleasant it's like the pint is trying to warn you about something so that's my review of Superbac Portuguese Lager, but yeah I came back to the 14th century attic.

Shit-faced on Superbock. Absolutely starving, because everything was closed. And in the apartment, under the sink, there was a tin of cocoa and pre-pandemic chocolate rice cakes. So I launched into that. And then it ended badly, as soon as the bright orange Portuguese spider turned up but it was worth it

it was all worth it because I wrote a short story that I'm incredibly happy with and came up with three or four ideas for new short stories so my mojo is back my flow is back and I'm very happy with that because I had desperate writer's block over the period of lockdown. Really, really bad writer's block. Because I bed. That's the chaos of existence.

That's the chaos and spontaneity of being alive that inspires creativity in me. The conflict of that, the conflict of it, will always travel into my unconscious mind and then find its way up a couple of weeks later as a story of some description. I think I'll write that on the Airbnb review of the place that I stayed in. But you know what else is mad? I got recognised three times in Porto from my vice. Once when I asked a group of Welsh people where the

nearest late pub was and they heard me and immediately just said, are you blind boy? and they heard me and immediately just said are you blind boy and then I was in a bar and a fucking Portuguese waitress took my order and then she recognized my fucking voice she wasn't Portuguese she was Brazilian her name was Marta and then I asked her how the fuck how are you recognizing my fucking voice and the answer she me, and I kind of predicted it, she said, my English teacher was Irish and she recommended that we listen to your podcast. And I've listened to it every week since then.

And then Marta in Porto gave me a free pint of Superbac because she listens to the podcast, but she's never become a patron. So thank you very much to Marta in Porto, if you're listening. I appreciated the direct action patronage and I wasn't expecting that to be honest like I knew the podcast has grown quite a large bit internationally over the pandemic but I wasn't expecting people in Portugal to recognize my voice but a huge amount of Irish people teach English abroad and quite a lot of them recommend my podcast to their students because if their students are advanced English speakers it's like

well don't listen to American stuff don't listen to English stuff listen to this fella here from Limerick and if you can understand him then your English is pretty good so I get quite a lot of international listeners from that alone oh by the way I am gigging in Madrid and Barcelona in May and they're nearly sold out so we'll be adding extra dates but this specific topic fascinates me a lot right there's loads and loads of Irish people teaching English to people as a second language which means that there has to be a lot of Portuguese people, Brazilian people, Spanish people, Vietnamese people who because they have Irish teachers now speak English with an Irish accent. And the reason I'm fascinated with this is something in particular piqued my interest during the week. So there's a Turkish restaurateur

by the name of Salt Bae. Now you probably know who Salt Bae is. He's a walking internet meme. he's a walking internet meme. Salt Bae, he became famous about four years ago because he was at a restaurant in Dubai, I think it was. And Salt Bae, he pours salt on your steak in a very extravagant way. And someone took a video of this and it went very viral. And then the internet decided to call him Salt Bae. Salt because he's putting salt on food and Bae because he's a good looking man. Now he's become really famous since because Salt Bae has started opening up restaurants most recently in London where people go to Salt Bae's restaurant and they spend a lot of money. So Salt Bae in the past like month has gotten particularly famous online

because the prices at his restaurant are so fucking expensive. If you go to Salt Bae's restaurant for a steak you can expect to pay maybe two grand or three grand. So that makes his restaurant incredibly exclusive. Only people who can afford to pay that amount of money are going to his restaurant. But food critics have gone there and they've said, the food isn't even good, it's not worth this money.

So why are people paying three grand to eat at this cunt's restaurant? And the reason is, they're paying for the internet meme. So what happens is, you're incredibly wealthy you sit down you order your steak and then salt bae himself comes out and he sprinkles salt on your steak in a very extravagant fashion while your friend videos it for instagram so what you're paying for is not the food but you're paying to prove the internet that you were there and that you can afford it and that you've become part of the internet meme it's exclusivity now also he does a ritual so he not only does he pour the salt on your steak he sticks a very sharp long knife into

it and he feeds the person the steak on the end of a sharp knife while they expose their throat. Now I've done a hot take on this on the podcast called Hot Cheesecake. I believe that really what Salt Bae is providing is it's a safe space for incredibly wealthy people to confront their unconscious fear of being beheaded by the guillotine via the proletariat that's what i think they're doing it's an execution ritual i think salt bay is also drawing from the long tradition of the turkish barber or when you go to a turkish barber they cut your beard with a cut throat razor you have to expose your throat there's a lot of threat there there's the chance of you dying there's a flirtation with mortality

but with Salt Bay it's it's rich people, generationally rich people going oh fuck what if someday the peasants rise up and they behead me like they did to my great great grandfather and I think that's what Salt Bay is all about but if you'd like to hear that hot take in depth

go to my podcast Hot Cheesecake from a few months ago but Salt Bay is,'s from Turkey. He's a Turkish restaurateur. From what I've read he doesn't speak very good English. He's only learning English at the moment. So when you see Salt Bae it's almost like Charlie Chaplin. He doesn't speak he just performs these extravagant movements where he sprinkles salt on steak and he looks kind of ridiculous when he's doing it and this is the allure of Salt Bae. Imagine my fucking shock this week when I found a clip of Salt Bae speaking English and he speaks English in a fucking limerick accent specifically when he says the word avocado. Now I couldn't believe this when I heard it.

I really couldn't believe it. When I heard this clip, I assumed that someone had overdubbed it in a limerick accent. Then I double checked and I'm like, no, this is Salt Bae's official fucking Instagram. And then I went and looked more and I found more videos of him pronouncing the word avocado in a limerick accent. And the thing is, this is a couple of videos, lads. It's not like a little bit of a monster accent. You couldn't confuse it for a Tipperary accent or a Clare accent or a Cork accent. Salt Bae speaks English in a thick Limerick City accent. He's from Turkey. What the fuck is going on? I'll play you a little clip. This is Salt Bae, the famous internet meme, saying the word

avocado. I'll describe the video first. It's a short video. The first thing we see is the outside of a fridge freezer, a walk-in fridge freezer. The door opens. As the door opens you are immediately confronted with the spectacle of Salt Bae. He is holding in his arm a tray of avocados. Then he opens his mouth and he says, Avocado! What the fuck is going on there? Why is a man from Turkey speaking in a Limerick City accent? It's not a Cork accent.

It's not a Kerry accent. It's not a Tipperary accent. That is a Limerick City accent. Like, I don't even say avocado like that. Like I've got a limerick accent but I have kind of a neutral limerick accent. He's speaking in a particularly thick very specific limerick accent. Like the way he stretches his vowels is very specifically limerick city. Like I'll say avocado and then someone from Cork might say avocado but he goes for avocado and that vowel avocado that's only Limerick City. Like that's a Limerick City thing that people do with their vowels. I've never been able to fully explain it like i said with cork it's

avocado there's a melody there the cork accent has a melody to it because i think it's because cork has so many hills because cork is so hilly when they speak their vowels they almost it's almost musical avocado but we don't have we're flat in Limerick, so we go, avocado. Like a Limerick person sounds like a Cork person who's just received some upsetting or urgent news. Listen again. Avocado. Who showed him that? Who showed him that specific way to pronounce avocado?

Like, I have a rubber bandit sketch from about 10 years ago called The Rubber Bandit's Guide to Madeira Cake, where me and Mr. Crone make a Madeira cake. And I say that in order to make a Madeira cake, you need to start it with a copper pipe. But in this sketch, I say the word copper pipe in a very specific Limerick way. I say, cup of pipe. Or if you hear someone in limerick say, are you getting into the car? They might say, are you getting into the car? It's like we're trying to achieve the climactic melody of cork, where the cork accent rises up in melody. It's like we can't do it. So instead we go sideways sideways i'm not letting you into this car you're not getting into this car you've no copper pipe you've no avocado muck away out of it you're only a goal now that's not like everyday parlance in limerick you won't

hear that all the time but it's it's a specific sideways speech that happens when a limerick person is distressed or specifically giving instructions or anxiety they think i'm after doing a shit in the bed and it's only a lot of cuckoo it's like the doppler effect you know when an ambulance goes past you or if a motorbike goes past you and it's the sound that it makes as it goes off into the distance that's the limerick accent because we have flat planes you just see see people walking away. Whereas in Cork, people climb things. They climb the hills. They've control over the melody.

You're not getting into this car without a copper pipe. You've no avocado. Fuck off you Cork cunt. I'm getting into the car. I've got five avocados and two copper pipes. The limerick accent gets blown away by the wind. And the Cork accent is protected from the wind by all the hills. blown away by the wind and the cork accent is protected from the wind

by all the hills. But those sideways windy vowels that you get in the limerick accent they're a fantastic musical instrument particularly in rap music. There's a limerick rapper called Hazy and he makes fantastic use of those

runaway vowels. Sounds like if Tom Waits and Cypress Hill fucked a dog in and had weird little skin puppies but what I need to know is, why is Salt Bae talking like that, why is a Turkish restaurateur speaking with

in a very specific Limerick City accent, I need to know the reason, I need to know the reason and I need to know is Salt Bae receiving English lessons from somebody from Limerick I need to know that and I have a strong suspicion that this is why unless all Turkish people pronounce the word avocado like avocado it's just maybe it's just an anomaly but I've got a buddy I have a buddy in Spain who's an English teacher and he's from Limerick

and he'd have kind of a neutral Limerick City accent like myself and I've spoken to him about his his Spanish students who learn English from him. And one issue that they have is, so they pronounce the word one, like one. Because in Limerick, one is one. One, two, three, one. But these kids are Spanish, and one is a Spanish name. So now they're going around the place counting, and you've got all these kids in Spain now saying Juan

Juan, like they're from Limerick something I'd like to point out also is my Salt Bay observation, my Salt Bay hot take, if you've been on Instagram this week or you've been on TikTok you may have seen this hot take

already, you may have seen a page called Ladbible, make this very hot take, you may have seen this hot take already. You may have seen a page called Ladbible. Make this very hot take. You might have seen Ladbible sharing a video of Salt Bae saying avocado with text underneath that says OMG Salt Bae sounds like he's from Limerick when he says avocado. Laughing crying face emoji. So if you're thinking that I stole this hot take from Ladbible I didn't. What happened was I posted it. I made the observation on Saturday and then Ladbible

decided to post a video pretending that they came up with it. Because that's what Ladbible do because they're arseholes. They're buttheads. Jesus Christ. They've done that to me about nine times over the past decade. I don't understand it. Just credit the person. Just credit the person. If you're going to be taking content,

you still get the same amount of views. You can still have your video. You can still have all of that. Just credit the person. What's the point in pretending that you came up with it? I don't get it. It's not like I can copyright the observation. It not like I can sue them and then I call them out and about a hundred other people call them out and then finally what they do is they credit you in the comments with about nine crying laughing face emojis and when Ladbible do that when they get called out and then they finally credit the person in the comments and put a load of laughing crying face emojis what lad bible are trying to do in that instant is they're trying to pretend that they're an 11 year old boy i'm sorry blind boy i didn't know it was your video

when i i got the video and i put it on on the computer my mom my mom let me at the computer and then my uncle john my uncle john was over and he gave me 40 euros for my confirmation when i put the video up on the computer and then I love the song that he did about the horseman it was outside and they're trying to pretend that they're an 11 year old boy when they take accountability and it's like you're not, you're multiple

adult men in your 30s who try to get away with not crediting people if you can you're legally registered as a business lad Bible. You do brand deals with advertising agencies. We know that you're not an 11 year old boy. Laughing, crying face emoji.

And I hate having to point it out every time. Because it makes me look pure petty. Like I don't actually mind that someone is pretending that my observation is theirs. That's not the issue. It's that Ladbible as a platform is fucking huge. Like they have millions of followers. So I end up with loads of people. Messaging me with Ladbible's posts.

Going oh my god blind boy have you seen this. Salt Bae has a limerick accent. Or worse. And I guarantee it would happen if I didn't do this disclaimer but worse someone listening to this podcast and then thinking that I nicked Ladbible's hot take but if anyone does know who is teaching Salt Bay English I would like to know if it's a limerick person doing it because this isn't the first time in history that that's actually happened. In the late 1890s

the Russian Royal Family so that was the Royal Family of Russia before the Soviet Union they all spoke English in thick Limerick accents because they had a nanny by the name of Margaret Eager who was from Limerick

and she taught all the Russian royal family how to speak English and this was the Russian royal family that ended up under the influence of that mad lunatic Rasputin the fella they couldn't kill so this Margaret Eager one

from Limerick was probably knew Rasputin and maybe Rasputin spoke in a Limerick was probably, probably knew Rasputin and maybe Rasputin spoke in a Limerick accent. So before the fucking Russian revolution, all the Russian royals spoke English with a Limerick accent. And then even more bizarrely, when the Russian revolution happened in 1917, right? So it became Soviet Russia and they overthrew the Russian monarchy. Lenin, and they overthrew the Russian monarchy. Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, who overthrew the monarchy and established Soviet Russia,

he spoke with a Dublin accent because he had learned how to speak English from a teacher that was from Dublin. So, something I'd like to speak about in the podcast this week, and it's a recurring theme on this podcast because i'm always fascinated by what i'd call the irish cultural footprint the reason being it's it's saint patrick's day this week patty's day as we call it or patty's day as the yanks call it and patrick saint patrick's day is it's celebrated everywhere in the fucking world. Like we're this tiny, tiny little country. And we've got St. Patrick's Day.

Halloween is an Irish holiday. I did a podcast a few months back exploring how the modern Western vision of what hell is. Like this place in the afterlife of eternal fiery torture, well that also comes from Ireland, via an 11th century manuscript called The Vision of Knug Dallas, which, who was an 11th century knight from Cork, who managed to get himself knocked out for two days and he claimed that he visited hell and he wrote about what hell was like in the 11th century and this manuscript

got passed all the way around the known world at the time until it ended up inspiring the paintings of a painter called Hieronymus Bosch in the 1500s and Hieronymus Bosch is the person who first painted gave us a visual representation of what hell is like the torture of hell Hieronymus Bosch did this but he took his visual inspiration from the visions of a

a knight from Cork in the 11th century so hell is basically Cork but I'd like to speak this week about a place called St. Patrick's Hall, which is a very intriguing site in Donegal. Which, when I investigated it when I did some research, is more evidence of Ireland's fairly large cultural footprint than our influence on modern thought and social constructs. But before I do that, let's have a little ocarina pause. I don't have an ocarina this week. Well, I don't. I'm in my fucking office.

And the ocarina didn't make it as far as the office. I don't have a lot of things in this office that I can make noise with. Do you know what I have? I have a trinket that I mentioned on one of the earliest podcasts. One of the first ever podcasts. I have the mug of fragile masculinity. The mug of fragile masculinity is one of the most embarrassing things that I own. Quite simply, all it is, is, it's like a thermos flask. It's a mug made out of metal, and I put a pint of tea inside it, and it will keep the tea warm. For about 90 minutes.

In terms of practicality. It's fucking amazing. But I hate it. Because I couldn't find. A pint mug. That's like a thermos. That keeps my tea warm. That just looks like a normal mug.

Instead this fucking piece of shit. It's made by the company Stanley and it looks like it's for outdoor use and it's army green and it's got a carabine on it for fucking tying to things. It's a mug that at all times says to me, you're a big strong man. You're a big strong man who can survive in the outdoors with your hot tea inside in your fucking office. So that's why I call it the mug of fragile masculinity. It's an embarrassing thing that I have that I must have so that I can have hot tea. Otherwise I'll drink too much tea. So this will keep a pint of tea warm for 90 minutes. In a traditional pint mug made out of ceramics I drink the tea too quickly and now I'm drinking three pints of tea per 90 minutes which is an unacceptable amount of tea drinking so I need

to keep it warm in the mug of fragile masculinity. But every time I take a sip, it tries to enforce unhelpful constructs about my gender, on me. So let's have the mug of fragile masculinity pause. I'll flick it. On April 3rd, You must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth.

Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying.

Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that?

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So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. Doesn't make much of a noise, because it's very sturdy stainless steel. It's a great mug. It's a fantastic mug. It just doesn't need to be that unnecessarily masculine. Just keep my fucking tea warm and don't tell me that I need to

strangle a deer with my bare hands in order to be a man. So you might have heard an advert there, I don't know what it was for. The adverts are algorithmically generated and inserted by Acast. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast.

If you enjoy this podcast, if you're listening to it regularly if it brings you some joy some solace some relief some entertainment whatever the fuck just please consider paying me

for that work that I do in order to put the podcast out this podcast is my full time job this is how I earn a living I'm only able to make the podcast and put the research into it because it's my full-time job. I love doing this work. I adore it. But if you're enjoying that work, just please

consider paying me for it. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Because someone else is paying for you to listen. So if you can't afford it, you're to listen so if you can't afford it you're paying for the people who can't afford it everybody gets a podcast i earn a living it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast also being a patron keeps the podcast fully independent i'm not beholden to any advertiser no advertiser can tell me what to speak about how to change my content I can turn down quite a lot of advertisers which is a very good thing because you never want to be beholden to advertisers you never want to be beholden

to them because then you can't turn them down and then they're dictating what the podcast is and before you know it you don't have a podcast anymore you have radio and what makes podcasts fantastic is that they're not radio a podcast is everything radio isn't podcasts allow small independent creators to make something that they're genuinely passionate about and the podcast space in general is being overtaken by large corporate money so small producers and small podcasters are getting pushed out so don't just support my independent podcast support whatever independent podcast that you're listening to and that you enjoy and you can support it monetarily or by sharing it or by just leaving a review i have some live podcast gigs

that i want to plug next Next Tuesday in Vicar Street. I'm in Vicar Street. I've got a very special guest. It's going to be unbelievable crack. It'll be a Tuesday. Perfect night. If you want to come to a live podcast, have a magnificent night,

not get shit-faced, be up the next morning ready for fucking work with a clear head. So I've got three Vicar Streets. The one next Tuesday, and then i have two in april and i only had like two months to promote these gigs which is a small amount of time to promote those gigs because of the restrictions and lockdown so please come along to those gigs in vicar street if you're in dublin they would be unbelievable crack vicar street gigs are always crack i've three gigs down in Cork at the end of this month. Opera House and two St. Luke's.

Currently I think there's only tickets left for one of those St. Luke's. But do come along. And then also. Oh I forgot about this one. On the 31st of March. I'm in the University of Limerick doing a live podcast. But that one's only open to students of University of Limerick. So if you're going to UL and you want to come along to my live podcast in UL, I don't know where you get the tickets but they can't be too hard to find.

And I think the university is doing a concession on them as well. I'm recording this podcast quite late. Not too late. It's, what is it now it's 10pm, the reason I'm recording this late is in my office today the barefoot accountant was howling, howling in the fucking corridor

em, if you've been listening to this podcast you know that I'm recording this in an office now and it's a shared space and there's this accountant who walks around barefoot on his phone screaming and he just had a bad day today and I could really hear what he was saying I there's I think some computer or some system was broken but he was stressed out barefoot howling screaming in pain and that made it difficult for me to record so I had to wait until after five o'clock basically for everyone to go home and now I'm recording this in a big giant

office office complex on my own in the dark and thank fuck I'm not scared of ghosts because there's a bit of a shining vibe it does have that shining sense I'm just in this huge building of offices and offices and offices and several stories and it's just me nobody else I think I'll go and have a howl I'll have a howl in the corridors and scare the ghosts now I'm not scared of ghosts but there's always that part of yourself isn't there there's always that part of yourself isn't there? There's always that part of yourself that can. No matter how old you are.

You can always freak yourself out. Like everyone has to battle with that thing. When you're a teenager. You know when you're a teenager and you're walking home at night time. And then the last 100 meters before your house. You freak yourself out about ghosts or aliens and there's no one around and then you decide to run the last 100 meters home and you do it when you're 12 and it's okay then you get to 13 you're still doing it but then you're 15

you're 16 and for me it was when I was 16 And I'm like man you're still doing the fucking 100 metre dash at night time as soon as you get. You gotta stop it. You gotta stop doing that. You gotta be a big boy. There's no ghosts. So I got rid of that. I don't do it anymore. But I could probably in this office complex.

I bet you I probably could freak myself out if I really wanted to. Because this office complex is, it's in the heart of Limerick City. And there's probably generations of misery underneath my feet. Limerick's an old city. Limerick

goes back 1100 years. There's been massacres and revolutions and famines and cholera epidemics all underneath my feet so if there was a haunting yeah I can't see why some old mouldy ghost from the

14th century isn't wandering these corridors something about the modernity of the fluorescent lights stops my ghost fear when I'm here alone in the office complex. As soon as I walk outside the door of my office and it's pitch dark in the corridor, for like one second I'm like, oh shit, what if I see a ghost? But then the sensors sense me and the fluorescent lights turn on and then the ghosts disappear.

And I can be a functioning adult once again. But I tell you what. Out of the hundreds of offices in this building. If there's one other person here. Who's also working late. And they don't know that I'm here. And I don't know that they're here. If one of us makes a noise.

We are freaking the shit out of each other. I had a buddy, when I was in college, he was from Cork, and he got himself a job, straight after his leave insert, where he'd managed to freak himself out about ghosts, so much,

that he developed an anxiety disorder, because he had this job, and this job sounds like purgatory, it sounds like one of the most, loneliest torturous jobs I could imagine he was the only security guard on an unbuilt multi-story car park at nighttime so it was this seven-story multi-story car park with no walls and no lights.

And just like ladders instead of stairs. And he had to go there at nine o'clock at night and then leave at eight in the morning. And he had this tiny little cabin. You'd think it'd be like, okay, grand, you just stay in your little cabin in the unbuilt multi-storey car park. Just stay in your little cabin for eight hours and you'll be okay. But no, that wasn't his job. Every half hour, he had to climb in the pitch dark with a torch up ladders in this fucking multi-story unbuilt car park and he had to press a button on each floor to prove that he was actually doing his job as a security man and every time he'd flash his torch

against the concrete pillars of the unbuilt car park every time he'd move his torch he'd see what he thought was a ghost or a figure jumping out from the shadows until he eventually just started getting massive panic attacks every night until he became afraid of ghosts. And the worst thing about the whole experience is that he lasted about three months in the job and by the end of it he'd managed to save up 900 euros and he spent the 900 euros on a floor length leather Armani jacket that he saw on TK Maxx that he never wore and this was not a leather jacket man not even a regular length

leather jacket this fella wore tracksuits he didn't know how he did it. And the reason he bothered is that he was so rattled from the anxiety that he wasn't making rational choices. This was the money he was supposed to save up for first year of college and he couldn't even sell it. He couldn't even sell it to a goth. Not even the goths in Cork wanted a floor length Armani leather jacket. but that's what I think of if I if I as an adult now manage to freak myself out about ghosts if I'm here alone in the office I just start thinking about that floor-length Armani leather jacket and the idea of it is so ludicrous and hilarious that it dispels any fear of ghosts whatsoever. But his story reminded me of

how purgatory is described. It's described as a place of uncertain anxiety where you're chased by demons but always protected by angels. But it's forever in between the two. So it's a continual anxiety. And we think of like the way we thought of hell as, you assume it's something in the Bible. But there's no mention of hell in the Bible.

Hell doesn't exist in the Bible. There's mention of dying and being somewhere where God isn't present and there's a loneliness. But this idea of torture and fire and demons that's an Irish construct that comes from that vision of Knug Dallas that I mentioned earlier but also I found out

that the vision of purgatory that we have is also an Irish construct and it can be traced to a place called St. Patrick's Hall called St. Patrick's Hall and St. Patrick's Hall is in Donegal and it was a place of Christian pilgrimage, it still is

in the 11th and 12th century St. Patrick's Hall was the it was like the equivalent of going to Brazil and doing an ayahuasca trip people would go to St. Patrick's Hall because they believed that when they went It was like the equivalent of going to Brazil and doing an ayahuasca trip. People would go to St. Patrick's Hall because they believed that when they went there they could experience purgatory. So St. Patrick's Hall, also known as St. Patrick's Purgatory, is a real place that you can visit now.

And it's on Loch Derg up in Donegal. And Loch Derg is, it's a large lake, because it's a loch, and in the middle is a tiny little island. And in this island is St. Patrick's Hall. Now when we think of St. Patrick, the legend of St. Patrick, what did he do? St. Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland. We don't know how fully true that is.

There was Christian monks in Ireland before St. Patrick. But it's generally accepted that St. Patrick definitely popularised Christianity in Ireland. It was something he wanted to do. Some people say St. Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland. Well, there was no snakes in Ireland. But what some people believe that means is that's a myth that was constructed by the Anglo-Saxons because there was snakes in England.

There still is snakes in England. And snakes are a metaphor for pagans. So when they say St. Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland, what I meant is that he converted the pagans to Christianity. But this was a long process. You know, Patrick coming to Ireland and going to all the chieftains and the clan leaders in Ireland and all the different petty kingdoms

and trying to convert these people to Christianity. And he had quite some success, But it took a long time. And where the legend of St. Patrick's Hall comes from. Is. So after Patrick. Converted some Irish people to Christianity. They started to revert back to their pagan ways. And they started to go to Patrick and go.

This fucking Christ businessman, you can't prove any of it. You can't prove any of this shit. They're just nice stories, but you can't prove it. And Patrick started to get really, really discouraged that when he gave the people of Ireland the word of God, they would revert back to their pagan ways and they wouldn't believe him

so God visited St. Patrick and said to him alright Patrick I'm going to tell you about a secret cave go up to a place called Donegal and you're going to find a lake

and in this lake there's a little island go into that island and you're going to find a lake. And in this lake there's a little island. Go into that island. And you're going to find a cave. Now go into that cave. And you're going to see hell. And any person in Ireland. Who doesn't believe in Christ or the word of God. You tell them.

To go to this little cave. In the middle of the island. In the lake in Donegal. Tell them go down into that fucking cave. And when they come back out, they're going to believe. They're going to believe in Christianity, because they will see hell in that cave.

And that was St. Patrick's Hall, a cave in Donegal, where if you go there, you can see, you can experience purgatory. So basically you're down there, and you're able to witness the tortures of hell without you actually experiencing them and anyone who went down there had a harrowing experience it was a terrifying experience where you're chased by demons but guarded by the angels and when you come out of the cave you're converted

and the cave is still there it was closed off in the 16th century but if you go to saint patrick's purgatory now there's a basilica around it it's a little island that looks like it has a church there but the cave is there you just can't get into it but what makes this so important and why i'm interested in it and why I'm interested in the overall Irish cultural footprint and Western culture as such is just how influential the legends around St. Patrick's Purgatory shaped what we consider to be purgatory and hell and what we understand it to be so in the 11th century apparently a knight an irish knight by the name of owen descended into the cave in dunny gall saint patrick's hall and lots of descriptions of owen's experiences were written about as an example of what's called irish vision literature and another example of this like I mentioned is the other 11th century manuscript I mentioned the vision of Knug Dallas that night that went to hell but Owen went into

St Patrick's Hall and he experienced purgatory he was as soon as he went down the steps of the cave he was dragged by his feet and I read you a little excerpt of this 11th century manuscript a translation the demons now hurried the night to the top of a lofty mountain and showed him a large number of people of both sexes and different ages all were sitting naked bent down upon their toes turned towards the north and apparently waiting in terror at the approach of death suddenly a violent whirlwind from the north swept them away, and the night with them, and carried them, weeping and lamenting, to another part of the mountain into a cold and stinking river, and when they endeavoured to rise out of its chilling waters,

the demons coursed over the surface and again sank them into its depths. The night, however, invoked the name of Christ and immediately found himself on the other bank. So what you have is this piece of 11th century Irish vision literature, which now we'd call science fiction, science fiction or fantasy. This wonderful, beautiful piece of imaginative literature about this knight called Een who goes down saint patrick's hall and is protected by the angels and protected by christ but is witnessing the horrible

vision of hell so it's purgatory it's both heaven and hell at once and also they show him the wonders of heaven and the fucking garden of eden and all this shit but the vision of owen down saint patrick's hall in the 11th century was such a brilliant piece of vision literature that it spread all over europe it spread everywhere because this is like a blockbuster like let's not view this as a vision of fucking hell and view it instead as Irish monks, Irish storytellers, Irish writers writing an incredible, beautiful, detailed, terrifying, imaginative fantasy story that was so impactful that it got copied and spread all over Europe and it directly influenced Dante because Dante is a 14th century poet from Florence and Dante is always credited with

the first description of hell Dante always gets the credit because he had Dante's Inferno which was it was a segment in his overall poem called the divine comedy but Dante is always credited as this is the modern vision of hell and it was invented by Dante in the 14th century and he was Italian Dante's lad bible basically Dante is taking all the credit for inventing the vision of purgatory and the vision of hell with his poem, The Divine Comedy. He's Ladbible. All he's doing is taking ideas from brilliant Irish fantasy writing from the 11th century and calling it his own. Because you've heard of Dante's Inferno.

You've heard of The Divine Comedy. These are in popular consciousness. You haven't heard of The vision of Owen. You haven't heard of the vision of Thug Dallas. But this is where it comes from. Dante was reading the vision of Owen and Dante was reading the vision of Thug Dallas. So it was Irish, early Irish medieval literature that went on to influence Dante, that went on to influence the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and gave us our modern interpretation of heaven, hell and purgatory. of Irish culture. Whatever the fuck we have going on here, going back 1,500 years, we make very impactful art,

specifically literature, that shapes Western culture. But a strange thing happened around the 12th century throughout Europe concerning St. Patrick's Hall in Donegal. So because the vision of Owen as a piece of beautiful literature, as a piece of terrifying literature, had travelled so much and was being rewritten and translated all around Europe, people who had money in Europe would read this terrifying story about

Owen's journey into the hall and they would become obsessed with it because the thing is is that it was a real place this wasn't a mythical place there was a place called Donegal and there's a lake called Loch Derg and there's an island in the middle of it and in that island is a cave and you go into that cave and you see purgatory so what happened in the 12th century and going right into the 13th 14th 15th century is very very wealthy people found themselves needing to go there to cleanse themselves it's the only thing i can compare it to now is jeff bezos and those cunts going into space you know the way now billionaires want to go off into the abyss of space

they want to see the liminal emptiness of outer space and look down at the earth and only the wealthiest people can do this and they're doing this because they have too much they have so much they're anxious and all they have too much they have so much they're anxious and all they have left is to spend 20 million quid to go up onto a spaceship and look down at the earth what they want is purgatory they say it's for science it's not it's spiritual they want to be up there and

you look in one direction and what you see is the beautiful glowing blue earth. That's the Garden of Eden, that's heaven. And then you look in the other direction and it's the empty black liminal nothingness of space, that's hell. And in that moment they can confront their own mortality. And if you're not a billionaire but you're a millionaire you can go to Salt Bae's restaurant and have him hold a knife to your neck and if you have no money you can read a book called the road by karmic mccarthy that's what saint patrick's hall was in the 12th century so you had all these noble families now traveling to dunny gall but the thing is with dunny gall in fucking 12th century, it was seen as the edge of the world.

They didn't know about fucking America or anything beyond it. Donegal was like the westernmost part of the world and it was seen as a, to get there was a gruelling, terrifying, dangerous journey. And if you're a wealthy prince from Florence in Italy or if you're from the south of France you'll never have experienced that bleak barren cold terrifying weather of Donegal freezing sideways wind and rain that cuts your face and imposing terrifying mountains with fucking rocks picked off them that's a big deal in the 12th century if you're from somewhere with decent weather

and all around Loch Derg there were these harsh rocks and stuff so all these rich cunts would spend months and huge amounts of money getting as far as Donegal freaking themselves out along the way

and what would happen with the stress of the journey is they'd get there, they'd get to St. Patrick's Hole, they'd go down there, and like my buddy who was working on that fucking building site and freaking himself out with the torch, they'd go down the cave and they'd go fucking mad. They would see demons.

They'd get panic attacks. They'd feel in extreme danger. They'd feel lonely. They'd feel everything that they don't experience because they were so wealthy. And they'd come out of it saying, yeah, I went down to St. Patrick's Hall

and I saw hell and I experienced hell and now I'm a to St. Patrick's Hall and I saw hell and I experienced hell and now I'm a changed man. So this was the most gruelling hardcore pilgrimage that you had to do if you had money and you were a Christian in Europe in the 12th or 13th century. You went down a cave in Donegal in the middle of an island called St. Patrick's Hall and you saw hell hell you visited purgatory and people still do it today you can do it now if you want but it's seen as the most hardcore christian pilgrimage that can be done it's only for raving lunatics the only time saint patrick's purgatory stopped being popular was i think it was the 16th century and some monk from the

Netherlands went to Donegal and went down the cave and he went when he went down there he was like this is grand and then he went back to the pope and he complained that no demons attacked him when he went down into St. Patrick's Hall but thousands of people still go there today and they go to the banks of Loch Derg and the first thing they have to do when they get there is they have to take their shoes off and they have to walk for ages over real jagged rocks until their feet fucking bleed and their feet bleed because the monks in St. Patrick's purgatory today sharpen the rocks so that they do cut your feet and people go there to suffer mainly catholics they go there to actually suffer so when you go on this pilgrimage to Donegal you're not allowed to eat there's no eating if you fall asleep someone will wake you up it it's sleep deprivation people put themselves

into a sense of starvation and sleep deprivation. And the only thing that you can consume in St. Patrick's Hall is a thing known as Lockdorg Broth, which is hot water that's flavoured with salt and pepper. And that's it. So you spend your time not eating, not sleeping, with your feet all cut up, praying that God will forgive them of their sins and trying to renounce the pleasures of the flesh

and torturing themselves. And to be perfectly honest, if you do that and there's enough people around you, you probably will have a few hallucinations, you will have a few visions, you will see demons. You'll put yourself into a situation where you're buying a floor length

fucking Armani leather jacket and TK Maxx so that's my hot take for this week I proved in a previous podcast that our understanding our modern understanding of hell is based on Cork when our modern understanding of purgatory is based on Donegal

and St. Patrick's Hole and that's my little St. Patrick's Day podcast a nice cheerful podcast about St. Patrick's Day if you're not doing anything on St. Patrick's Day I'm going to be back on Twitch I'm going to be back on Twitch at half eight Thursday night

making some tunes I'm not going to be drinking I might so recently I was I was given a recently I was given a can of stout by the Array Collective they're a group of artists and they won this year's Turner Prize and this Turner Prize was an installation that contained several different objects one of these objects was a can of stout and they gave it to me as a gift

and I'm considering drinking this can of stout on my live Twitch stream as a piece of performance art because technically I'd be drinking the Turner Prize so I might do that but I will be on

Twitch this Thursday night at half 8 making up some songs in a digital environment and having some fun because I haven't been on Twitch in two weeks and I'm looking forward to getting back twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast if you're not doing nothing on Paddy's day. I don't have a

Twitch song this week because i'm not editing them fast enough i can make four songs in an hour but editing one song down to four minutes takes about five hours so i don't have one this week but i'll be working on getting them getting them together soon okay dog bless everyone have a wonderful week this week. I'm going to be back next week with a hot take. A hot take or possibly a surprise. I may be interviewing someone this week

who's a bit of a big deal and if that goes ahead, hopefully that's what I'll have next week but I can't confirm whether it's going to happen or not. But that's all I'll say. And also but I can't confirm whether it's going to happen or not. But that's all I'll say. And also come to my gigs that I mentioned earlier, please. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.m you can also lock in your playoff pack right now to

guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you.