The Blindboy Podcast - Facts that I avoided telling my Barber during a recent Haircut

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Aperol Spritz, the sweat of a stressed Accountant and a Chimney Sweeps scrotum Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Strangle a Gannet, you jangley anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If you're a brand new listener, if this is your first ever episode of the Blind Boy podcast, then consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, a steaming quaver, a 10-foot deckland, you know the crack, you're very welcome. I'm just back from another difficult haircut. It's actually a fantastic haircut.

I'm very, very happy with the aesthetic results of the haircut itself, which there's no point to... There's no point describing it. Because I wear a plastic bag on my head, so there's no point describing the haircut. I'm not into haircuts. Paint the wall magnolia and hang a sign that says live, laugh, love. That's the type of haircut that I get. You know when you walk into an Airbnb, you open the door, you put your bags down. You take a look around

and you acknowledge that yes, this apartment appears to be what I booked. It looks like the photographs in Airbnb. This looks about right. But now that I am here everything's a bit shit generic and cheap, isn't it?

They've done the bare minimum here. I used to use Airbnb years ago, 12, 13 years ago. Before it was evil. Now it's destroying cities. What it used to be, it was a pure recession thing. It was a recession thing when people didn't have money.

You'd go to Spain or Italy and a real life human being is letting you use their home for a weekend. And it was way cheaper than hotel rooms. You'd actually meet the host, the person whose house it is. And yes, it was really cheap, but it came with. Like a massive human responsibility of this is someone else's home and I have to be respectful here. When I was writing my first book in 2016, 2015, that's the service I used to avail of in Spain. And the host would be really excited that like an Irish writer is coming over to write their book in my apartment. There was substance and authenticity and humanity to it.

Then about 2017 onwards that changes. You're no longer meeting your host. You start to get the feeling that the host you're speaking to on the app doesn't actually own the apartment that they might actually be someone who's hired to manage it. Then you get to Spain or Italy and there's no human being to meet you. Instead, there's an app and your keys to the apartment aren't given to you by a human being. They're in a lockbox that you need a code to open. You go, fuck it, who cares?

You walk into the apartment, you open the door and you become acquainted with that, the Airbnb aesthetic, which is, this is very cheaply designed to look like someone lives here, but no one fucking lives here. We're faking it, just enough to make it look nice in photographs. But if someone who's here on holiday gets shit-faced and trashes the place or projectile vomits, everything from the chairs to the toaster to the picture frames are very easily and cheaply replaceable. The walls are magnolia and there's a live-lap love sign and the floors are a silvery type of wood veneer, millennial grey, and all the furniture-cour-cray. and all the furniture comes from a centralised website

that furnishes Airbnb properties all around the world that's why they look the same and it's a specific look it's not the landlord look like the landlord look a landlord will just fuck you over the landlord look is why is this

why is this light switch hard to use oh someone has painted over it 35 times there's a centimetre of emulsion paint and that's why I can't use the light switch That's the landlord look They don't give a fuck Airbnb is different Airbnb has to make

an immediate good first impression But ultimately you're dealing with shit That's the type of haircut that I get That's the type of haircut that I want Cut my hair As if it's an Airbnb apartment Because I just want to blend in I just want to blend in

With the crowd And not draw any attention to myself First glance Yeah everything's all right right with this fella's head. Nothing special going on here though, let's move on. Like, not like the old days of Airbnb where you walk into that Spanish apartment and you go, oh my God, is that real mahogany? I better get a close look at that. And you're there in someone's house marvelling at the

intricate carving on a mahogany fucking sideboard that could be 150 years old. That's what Airbnb used to be 15 years ago. I don't want that haircut. I don't want a haircut that's so nice that someone notices it or God forbid wants to talk about it. I want soap dispensers in the shower and a television bolted to the wall. That's the haircut that I want. Can you give me that? Airbnb is really it's done a lot of damage hasn't it? The southwest of Ireland. Like dingle down in Kerry, which is, I mean, utterly beautiful, utterly stunning place, which traditionally received a lot of tourism. But now there's so many Airbnb properties for short-term letting that there's shortages of like nurses and police and teachers in Dingell because they can't fucking live there in Naples over in Italy. Which was never huge with tourists because Naples was always a little bit rough around the edges compared to the likes of Milan.

But now inner city Naples is full of Airbnb's. but they're being run by the Camara the Camara are the Neapalitin mafia but the Camara who used to be very heavily involved in the heroin trade they've moved on from heroin now and now they run Airbnbs they buy up entire buildings

and film full of tiny apartments and they open Apparel Spritz bars and fuck Aparel Spritz while we're here it's disgusting Now I know you might be thinking Oh I love my Aparol Spritz Do you really? Or have you been marketed to? Sometimes I think I love Aparall Spritz

This wonderful big fizzy orange drink Full of Ice That makes you look like you have friends Have you ever seen a person drinking Aparol Sprits by themselves? No, the entire marketing of it is And the entire group has to get Aparol Spritses You can't just have one on your own If you want to taste that on your own

You gotta get it a Nogrony Actually, if you did order an apparel spritz on your own and someone saw you, they would never assume you're on your own. They'd think that your friends are in the toilet. Sometimes I think I want an apparel spritz until I order it and drink it. And I taste it and I go, wow, this looks amazing. Why does it taste like this? Did you ever take a bite of a gone off satsuma?

A satsuma that looks absolutely fine on one side, but then hidden on the dark side of the satsuma is a soft sunken bros. a wet bros dotted with fluffy turquise mould and then you eat it. That's what apparel sprits taste like. And with very subtle tones of human sweat. Also present in its bouquet. There's a group of profoundly stressed out chartered accountants in my office at the moment on the second floor and I think their business is going under. They're always just outside smoke and fags huddled around. Very, very worried. When they leave their office on the second floor and go out into the smoking area,

their sweat has a catpissed tang which hangs in the corridor and then is awoken by sunlight and rises up the staircase to me at the top. Their body odor. It's stress sweat, cortisol sweat. And there is a putrid citric musk in that which I can taste in apparel spritz. And this? This is what's cornered the gin and tonic market. Do you not remember the giant, giant goblets of gin full of ice from 2019? What was wrong with that? How did that get replaced with apparel sprits? It tastes like the piss of a dog that's

been force-fed, Luke is it? I'm going hard on apparel sprits, but like, how dare a drink have the temerity to look like that and then taste the way it does that's my issue there's a slice of orange in it like a big fresh slice of orange the apperateef itself

the fucking apparel that's made out of the corpses of oranges it's rotting orange that's what that's the taste it's what it is you know when you go to Spain or Italy and you're walking down the street and there's oranges growing on the side of the road

and if you eat them you'll shit yourself and the locals say we don't you're going why aren't you eating all the oranges that are grown on the fucking trees in Spain and the locals go we don't eat those we don't eat those we don't eat them

and then you go fuck that I'm going to eat one and you get the shits and it's disgusting well I didn't do that my brother did it and destroyed his honeymoon but that's what's in apparel spreads the ghosts of those orange peals and we keep buying them I'm pissed off at me

it's me I'm actually angry with myself because the next time I'm if I'm out in the song and there's people around. I'm probably going to order an apparel spritz, even though I know what it tastes like. I'm going to do it to myself again and it'll arrive down.

Wow, look how refreshing this looks. And then I put my lips around the straw and I'm instantly sucking the urethra of a Labrador and thinking about the armpits of the stressed out accountants. Just give me one of those gigantic glasses of gin and tonic, elder flower tonic, full of ice with some peppercorns in it that's fit for a 35 year old woman from 2019. But anyway, the Camara, they operate sprits bars in Naples and they run Airbnbs and they protect tourists.

If a local criminal decides he wants to rob a tourist or pickpocket, they get their hands broken. But it's destroying the community. The Camara aren't destroying their communities with heroin now. They're destroying their communities. communities by buying up buildings and filling them a full of fucking Airbnb's and shitty spritz bars. I know about this, I read an article about this specifically at the weekend, because I'm fascinated with the Kamara as an organized crime group because of the TV series Gamara, which I adore. It's annoying because it's pure neoliberalism.

I mean organized crime groups like I said, they used to destroy their communities with drugs, which is illegal, and now they can destroy their community, legally through Airbnb. It's not regulated. And if regulations do exist, they're not being enforced. And I just think, if Airbnb as a model has the potential to destroy communities, then it probably isn't ethical.

Maybe it shouldn't exist at all. This week's podcast is sponsored by Apparel Spritz and Airbnb. So I'm just back from a haircut. And it was a very successful haircut. I'm happy with the haircut that I now have, but that doesn't mean it's a nice haircut. Make my head look like an Airbnb in Tenerife and I'm perfectly okay with that because I don't like standing out. I don't want a haircut that's so shit that people look at me and go look at the state of

his haircut and I don't want a haircut that's so nice that someone's going to speak to me about my hair cut. I just want, live laugh, love, that's it, ignore my head please. I am not interesting. don't engage in conversation. There's someone over there with a much more interesting haircut. Have a chat with them please. But you're drinking an apparel spritz.

You must be a highly social individual with tons of friends. No, I'm drinking an apparel sprits on my own. I don't want to talk to you. So for this week's podcast, this isn't going to be a phone call podcast. But also, it's not a phone call podcast. But also, it's not. It's not a podcast about any one singular thing.

This week's podcast, it's a chapter in the novel. It's a chapter in the novel that is this podcast. It's a meditative short story. I want to speak about all the things I said to my barber during my haircut. And all that the things I couldn't say to my barber during my haircut. Because you know about me in fucking haircuts, it's not my comfort zone. The fear of being trapped in,

in incredibly awkward small talk. And also, the barber shop itself is already quite overstimulating because you have multiple conversations going on. Then you're kind of stuck rigidly in the chair because you have to look ahead, and you've got that cape on. So you have to kind of really sit still while you're speaking. Can't move your hands.

And then the big one is, you can't get up and leave. If your hair is half cut, I mean you can if you like, but I'm not walking out into the street with half a hair cut so I have to stick it through until the end I'm never going to ask a barber not to speak it's just against the culture that is not our culture chatting in small talk it's a big part of Irish culture

and it's very difficult to find a way to ask for silence without the other person being offended it's a bit like turning down a pint if someone offers you a fucking drink in Ireland it's impossible to say no without the other person getting offended. You have to lie to say you're on antibiotics. And barbers in my experience tend to be highly extroverted individuals. Not all barbers, of course. I'm sure you're going to have your neurodivergent barbers, but it's not really a job that suits neurodivergent people.

There are people who... whose nervous systems regulate, who experience a feeling of safety. from small talk, banter, gossip, crack, people who don't like being by themselves, people who really seek out external stimulation from other human beings, highly extroverted, highly neurotypical. I mean, I'd fucking love to be that way. Jesus Christ, I'd love it. Now, yes and no, yes and no. People like that who I do know, they'll often say things like, I just had to get out of the house. What do you mean you had to get out of the house? I just go mad by myself. I just go mad on my own. I just had to get out and see someone.

And I know a few people like that and it's a wonderful lesson on the diversity of just being a human being. Being by themselves with their own thoughts doesn't feel safe or feels overstimulating. So they seek stimulation from outside in order to feel happy. Whereas with me, my feeling is safety, happiness, stimulation. It's very internal. It's the conversations that I'm having with myself, my own interests, my time by myself, and external stimulation, conversations with other people. I can do it.

But it's not my comfort zone. And eventually, it's too much and I have to escape. So when I sit down with Annie Barber, especially if they're a new barber, a barber I've never been with, I have to ask myself, is this person okay with facts? What type of conversation are we going to have here? Is this going to be a relational conversation? Or is it going to be a conversation about ideas? More and more of the research, the modern research that I look at around autism,

the scientific papers are taken from the lived experience of autistic people, rather than it being, neurotypical doctors, observing the fucking behaviour. of autistic people. There appears to be a difference in the sense of intrinsic reward that neurodivergent people get and neurotypical people get from conversation. Different goals of the outcomes of conversation, of small talk, particularly between strangers.

For years, I read, autistic people have difficulty with small talk because autistic people tend to go on monologue about facts. Bullshit, that's not what I'm doing at all. I'm trying to make the conversation more interesting. I never want to monologue about something that another person isn't interested in to the point that they're uncomfortable or bored. I never want to do that.

But I can tend to try and push conversations towards interesting topics or ideas as soon as possible. Because that's the intrinsic reward for me if I can get a game of tennis going with somebody and we're sharing interesting facts and then they're adding to my fact or going, fuck it, did you know this? I didn't know that. Did you know this? Wow, and what about

this? I love that. The conversation is now it's a creative act. We're writing a story together. There's purpose. And the purpose of this conversation is we're speaking about ideas and we're writing a little collaborative story here.

If I meet a person who's into that, fucking great. Then we're having a great chat. But then there's another completely different type of conversation which is relational. What did you do last night? Oh, I went to this pub. Oh, who was there? Oh, this person was there. Oh, I know them. Do you know what happened this time when I went there? No, do you know that person? I do indeed. How do you know them? Like if I had to sum up neurotypical conversation that I've observed from a distance throughout my life, the ultimate goal of a good neurotypical conversation between two strangers, like if you overhear it at an

airport or something. The ultimate goal of a successful neurotypical conversation is if it can end with one person saying, small world, small world. That means that those two people have had a relational conversation to the point that they've narrowed it down, that they both know the same person. No ideas were discussed. They didn't speak about concepts. Facts weren't exchanged, but the two people connected over relations. So the intrinsic reward there is about human connection, whereas my intrinsic reward comes from, did I just learn a cool new fact from this human? Or do I feel wonderful? Do I feel really good that I was able to give this person a fact that I know has fucking changed their day? And I love looking at conversation that way, because it brings in the diversity of human experience. There's

no value judgment there, nobody's wrong. Like there's a snobbish way of looking at that where it's like, what's that fucking quote? Great minds discuss ideas and average minds discuss people. Bullocks. Some people just find it more intrinsically rewarding and safer when they're speaking to another

person if they can find connection. But also, if two people are having a chat and they want to be about ideas or facts. Those two people aren't weirdos or nerds or freak. are boring. Why am I scared to go into the barber? Why am I an adult man? Worried, concerned, reluctant and avoidant at simply sitting in a fucking chair for a half an hour and needing

to speak with a stranger? What's gonna happen? What's the worst? What a bad thing can possibly happen? That's a threat in any way. Nothing. Awkward silence. That's the worst that can happen. So where's the fear coming from? My fuck and lived experience. Being 12, 13 years of age and walking into a group of kids your own age who you only kind of know.

Secondary school, fucking secondary school. In primary school you knew everybody and then you're thrust into secondary school and you only know some people. So there's new people and new groups. And when you get to secondary school

some people mature more than other people. So one group is having quite teenage adolescent conversations, but then this other group that are the same age or maybe a year earlier, they're having conversations that are still a bit childish. And those lad's voices have broken, but those lad's voices haven't broken, and that in itself is confusing. And you walk into the fucking group and interrupt the relational conversation with a fact

or a subject that it isn't being spoken about and you're immediately met with ridicule. Or you do it in class. like I stopped putting my hand up in fucking school can you imagine the questions I'd have been asking in fucking school when I was listening to the teacher like I can remember the first time this ever happened and it the fact that I was

five and I still remember it now and I still remember the pain we had a substitute teacher adult woman and we're all like five and for some reason she mentioned John Lennon I don't know why whatever she was speaking about, she mentioned John Lennon or his song Imagine or whatever. I'm five, I put my hand up and I said, miss, miss. She goes, what? Did you know that the person who shot

John Lennon was called Mark David Chapman? And she paused and said to the class, well, thank you for that useless piece of information. And my heart sank and everybody fucking laughed. And I shouldn't remember that at this age, you see. I shouldn't remember that exact moment when I was fucking when a teacher did that. Bringing up the fact that the name of the person who shot John Lennon obviously wasn't relevant to the context in how

the teacher was speaking about John Lennon. Her name was Mrs. Lahan. What a fucking prick. What a fucking prick you are to do that to a five-year-old. A five-year-old can say nothing wrong. No contribution from a five-year-old is ever wrong.

Or worthy of being shamed or laughed at by an entire fucking class. I've had a lot of those experiences throughout my entire life. Okay? Where I misread whatever the fuck has happened and in a conversation, I step in with a fact. And if the people are not receptive of that fact, it's taken as an insult.

You're looked at strange. It's not that deep. What a weirdo. And all of that hurts like fuck because it's rejection. It's rejection and a reminder that you're strange and weird and an outsider. and unfortunately when you step into one of those relational fucking conversations

where there's a group of people making relations and you step in and you become the outsider which are a little weird off act sadly the group dynamic strengthens when they exclude you

now they've all bonded about how they all have something in common and now they're all laughing at you and by laughing at you and excluding you and calling you a weird freak that makes their bond stronger and the person who's leading it becomes the leader of that group so unfortunately I carry the pain of that when I walk into barbershops even though like if someone tried to pull that shit with me now tried to pull a it's not that deep you think too much

or weirdo I'm gonna assert myself with that person immediately because I refuse to be mistreated if the thing that I'm doing isn't like mean. If my speech isn't harmful or designed to make a person uncomfortable or isn't intended to hurt someone, then I'm not going to accept it if someone tries to shame me for it. But I'm better at reading things now. It's like a bit of a gay dar, where you learn to read very quickly

if a person is going to be receptive of interesting facts or not during small talk, a stranger. So when I sat down with the barber, the first thing the barber said to me was well what type of haircut do you want now I didn't say I want my haircut to be like a fucking Airbnb I said give me what I have now

but shorter how long he said and I said about six weeks don't want to come back for about six weeks and then he says to me I'm really sorry but you're going to have to wash your own hair and bit taken aback see when you go to the barbers in front you there's a little base

and you stick your head forward and they rinse your hair really quickly to make it easier to cut. But my barber goes, you're going to have to wash your own hair and then he lifts up his hand and his right hand is in a bandage.

So I go, oh fuck, are you okay? What's going on? Assuming he'd cut himself with a scissors or something and he goes oh no no, it's grand it's just barber's hand. So then immediately for me it's like dynamite goes off

in my head. What the fuck is Barber's hand? What is Barber's hand? this is new I'm very curious to know what the fuck Barber's hand is now so I go what what what what's Barber's hand and then he goes

ah look it's just a bit swollen hairs get stuck in the skin it's just a bit swollen now that answer I knew I was dealing with someone now who we're not going to have a facts based conversation the fact based conversation person is going to tell me everything about

Barber's hand they'd be really happy that a person is curious enough to care about fucking Barber's hand and then they'd explain to me in detail what the fuck Barber's hand is. This fella didn't do that. He brushed it off and instead said that's just hairs get into the skin it's a bit swollen. Now maybe he's sick. Maybe he's sick at telling everybody specifically what's wrong with his hand. But I don't take the risk. I don't push further and I park it in my head and I say well if he's not going to tell me what the fuck

barber's hand is. Remember it because you're going to look it up later. Yeah, yeah, so look, if it's all right, wash your own hair, I'm really trying to keep it dry. I need to make sure it's going to be healed because I'm going to the Canary Islands in September. Right, he's talking about holidays. He's talking, I have a barber who's talking about holidays. This person wants a relational conversation. This is not going to be facts based. This isn't going to be ideas, the sharing of information. He's just told me that he's going to the Canary Islands in a month so that I'm going to say, no fucking way, I was there. Where are you going? Which is what I did say. What I didn't say was the Canary Islands is actually quite interesting right now because as you know,

look, it's, it's a territory of Spain, but it's off the west coast of Africa and the Canary Islands, it's one of the examples that we have of the complete genocide and eradication of a population of people. The Guancha people were the indigenous people of the Canary Islands and they were eradicated entirely by the Spanish in the 1400s. Their genocide and slavery became like a blueprint for what was to happen in the century afterwards with the North Atlantic slave trade. No guanche people exist anymore.

They're completely gone. All we have are traces of their DNA in some of the Spanish population through the matrilineal DNA, but that's it. They're gone. We have artifacts. We have some stories from the mythology that was recorded by Spanish colonizers,

but that's it, they're gone. And the Canary Islands itself, It's a gigantic, it's a resort, it is a resort island built on fucking genocide. And why it is relevant right now at this very moment is because of what happened a couple of weeks ago in Suta there in North Africa. So Suta, which is just at the tip of Morocco, is Spanish, technically Spanish soil. European soil technically even though it's in North Africa and it's tiny and a couple of weeks ago

50,000 Moroccan immigrants crossed the border and arrived in Souta it was unprecedented it was strange it looked deliberate there appeared to have been an online disinformation campaign like these Moroccan migrants

when they crossed the border into Suta they looked so hard happy. They, that's what breaks my heart when I, when I see migrants crossing into Europe, either on the beach or when they went into Suta, they're just young people who look so happy. They think that the people of Europe are thrilled to see them. And as if they don't know about the racism they're about the fucking face. The young migrants that went into Suta were crossing a finish line.

Several of them died and drowned. But when the journalists went to the, when they spoke to the migrants, it was clear that there was an online disinformation campaign for about a month previously, where a lot of those young migrants genuinely believed that there was some little loophole whereby if they managed to get the Souter, they would instantly receive European citizenship. So somebody had spread this disinformation campaign. There's a plausible theory that what happened there a couple of weeks ago with 50,000 migrants from Morocco suddenly arriving in Suta was a form of non-linear warfare against Spain

by Israel and the US. Israel hates Spain. Spain are as a large European country are very outspoken against Israel. In the same Ireland are as well. Ireland are quite outspoken about Israel. When Spain speak out about Israel, it rubs them up a very certain way. The very certain way that it rubs Israeli leaders up is hypocrisy. In 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Year, tweeted, Let's make a deal. We won't fund NGOs in your country calling you to give away Suta, and you stop funding NGOs in our country,

calling us to give away Judea and Samaria which is the West Bank so Israel's issue with Spain is we just want to fucking do what you did we just want to fucking you do what ye did that's all we're doing you colonising

cunts don't she call us out because we just want to do what you did why do you get to do it and we don't get to do it that business that happened there in Suta it does look fucking dodgy that many migrants arriving at once, the disinformation campaign, the footage of Morocco too, Morocco is aligned with Israel,

the footage of Moroccan military vehicles, I believe, or Moroccan police vehicles, offloading certain people saying, look, cross the border. It was an attempt to throw Spain into crisis and it worked because then you had the right wing Israeli and US aligned fascist government of Italy with your one fucking Maloney. She then, she closed the borders with Spain. The Schengen Agreement, whereby you can pass from Spain to Italy without a passport. She cut that. So this looked like some type of fucking coordinated US, Israel and then a phone call to Italy shit.

To create a crisis for Spain and that's what happened. But the Canary Islands, right? That's what Israel and the US are trying right now to do to Gaza. People live on the Canary Islands, but it's tourism. It's a resort island. Its economy is tourism. And the Canary Islands are an example of the indigenous population where fully, full genocide. One of the examples where you can actually go, unfortunately, the indigenous people, the Guanté people of the Canary

islands are not with us anymore because the Spanish did an entire ethnic cleansing genocide on them in the 1500s and then turned their island into what is now a tourist resort and that is the current US and Israeli plan for Gaza in 2025 the Washington Post got their hands on a leaked Gaza redevelopment plan and this is where Trump and Netanyahu want to turn Gaza into the Riviera, the Gaza Riviera. Any Palestinian people left living there, they wouldn't own money,

they'd own these digital tokens. And it's being handed over to this quote-unquote Board of Peace. Tony Blair is involved. The plan for Gaza is in 20 years' time, it's going to become like Dubai. It won't be a home for Palestinian people. It'll be one of these just weird,

soulless international cities where you can go and not pay any tax and only billionaires can live there. Like Dubai, a site of genocide that would become a holiday resort for the wealthy. And that's actually what the Canary Islands is. When you look at the history of the Canary Islands, even though we think of it as fucking lovely Canary Islands, a place to go for a holiday, the people there were fully genocided. And it's a resort built on a graveyard. And that pisses off, Israel. Because you see, at least with us with the Irish, the Israel, like, we didn't colonise people.

So we're going, hold on a second. What the Brits did to us is reminding us a bit of what you're doing to the Palestinians. What with the Spanish? It's you fucking hypocrites. Stay out of our affairs. We just want to copy what you did, you hypocrites. And if you're so high and mighty then, why do you have territory called Suhocrites? in North Africa, our territory called the Canary Islands.

If we are such bad colonizers, what the fuck are you do in Spain? Maybe we'll upset that apple cart, will we? But I did not say that to my barber when he brought up the Canary Islands. Instead, I said, fuck, you're going to the Canary Islands. Oh my God, that's beautiful. And then he goes, yeah, I was there last year. My girlfriend going again, hoping this hand fucking hand gets better, but going again this year. And I said, what part were you in?

and then I can't remember the area that he said but he said we were in the quieter part and then he went because you know what it can get a bit dodgy I'm like what do you mean well all the nightclubs

all the nightclubs are there and you know you can't walk past without people trying to sell you coke all the coke dealers are out there so then I go brilliant okay relational conversation I'm going to tell him the story about when my friend tried to buy coke in Spain

and now we can We can bond on the common relational theme of purchasing cocaine in Spain. If I get him relaxed enough, I might even be able, if I, no, if I gain his trust enough through this story, then I can safely drop a couple of appropriate facts to keep me interested. And then we'll find the middle ground between relational conversation and then me being able to drop relevant facts, not too insane, without me looking like a lunatic. And of course my attempt went fabulously fucking tits up. Let me do an ocarina pause because this is too ridiculous.

I need to do an ocarina pause before I tell you how weird this went. First off, Patreon. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I rent out my office. It's how I fucking pay for my electricity. It's how I purchase haircuts. This is my full-time job.

And this is the listener for my funded podcast. So if you enjoy listening to this podcast, please consider contributing directly via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you met me in real life, would you buy me a pint? Would you buy me a coffee? Well, you can do it digitally. That's all I want, the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast. Whether you pay or not,

I get to earn a living. What more could you ask for? It's a wonderful model. So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. And if you're a new patron, don't do it on the app on your iPhone

because Apple take 30%. Try and do it in a browser, please. Also, it keeps us independent. I'm not beholden to advertisers. I mean, obviously this episode is not. sponsored by fucking Apparel Spritz and Airbnb. But even

speaking in that way about two large brands like that makes this podcast toxic for a huge amount of other brands. They're just going to be like, no fuck off on that advertising on his podcast. Well, fuck off. Grand, we don't need you.

We're listener funded over here. All right? Okay, Ocarine. I don't have an Ocarina. I've got some chewing gums. I'm going to spin some chewing gums and rattle them. The fucking sun is getting outside here. Bullocks! If it was tomorrow fucking night I'd see the solar eclipse.

There's a, there's a solar eclipse tomorrow. What a shame. I'm not recording this in the smack bang in the middle of that fucking solar eclipse. I'd have a beautiful, it's this time tomorrow. And I'd have the best view of it here in my fucking office. Bullocks. Not gonna happen for another 90 years. But anyway, should the starlings will be with us very soon.

I can see some sea. Right here's a bit of chewing gum and you're going to hear an advert for bullshit. Okay, upcoming gigs. I am going to be at Electric Picnic this year. I've been at every single Electric Picnic since 2006. There's going to be adults at Electric Picnic who were born when I did my first gig at Electric Picnic. What am I going to do? Turn down Electric Picnic. Do you think I want to be going to Electric Picnic?

Do you think I want to gig it? Like, no. Like, and no disrespect to electric picnic. I fucking hate festivals. Big loud fields full of people. Highly overstimulating. I love the gig part. I love going doing my show.

But I go there and I get the fuck out. I did no festivals this summer. I don't regret that decision at all. Um, I'm going to do electric picnic because she might as well, might as well. So it's going to be in Mindfield on the Saturday, in the theatre tent, which first come first serve, basically. You either get a seat or you don't. And my, my live podcasts at festivals, they tend to have quite large cues. So if you really want to come to it, try and get down there early. It's the 29th of August and I've got a brilliant fucking guest.

Look, I know I'm just being an autistic old man. That's all I'm doing. Festivals are barbershops. Neither of those things are my comfort zone. But I do them anyway. I'll push through. Then we've got that UK tour. Wait, there's a fucking gig in Sligo, isn't there? There's a gig in Sligo there. Um, in, is that November, is it? It's in the Hawkswell Theatre and it's around November and there's not a huge amount of tickets left, right? And it's up in Slige. It won't be that hard to find. Hawkswell Theatre, blind by, sometime in the next few months. it's actually after my UK tour yeah okay so the tour

England's gotten in Wales kicking off on the 18th of October fucking Brighton Wales Cardiff in Wales Coventry at the Warwick Arts Centre Beacon Hall in Bristol G-Live Guildford London is sold out

Glasgow Good is sold out Gateshead Nottingham and that's all happening in October Fane dot code at UK forward slash the blind by podcast. And then my Australia tour 2027, which is nearly sold

out, Brisbane and part, they're both gone. So you're left with Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, in New Zealand and that's going to sell out. So if you want your tickets, get them now, please. So anyway, back to the barbershop. So I'm there in the barbershop

and the barber goes, you know, I can't wait to go back to the canaries but we stayed away from Las Palmas, that was it. We stayed away from Las Palmas the last time which is the main kind of town in the Canaries and he goes yeah it's just down by the

nightclubs, bit dodgy, everyone trying to sell you coke. Wasn't really my thing. So then I go for, I actually had the opposite problem. I was in the city of Cordoba in Spain and some people I know were visiting but Cordoba is the type

of city where it's kind of slow it's not a big party city you're not going to see a lot of nightclubs a lot of drugs if you're lucky there might be a bit of weed somewhere but I was there anyway

and was out with some people and we'd had a couple of drinks and we were having a lovely night and then one of the lads now at this point a 12 year old boy walks into the shop a 12 year old boy walks into the barber shop

and sits behind us and I'm in the middle about to tell this story about coke so I'm there speaking to the barber and I'm thinking fuck how am I going to tell him this story you know about this fellow who was trying to get coke without saying cocaine in front of that 12 year old child who can definitely hear us behind us so I decided I'm going to spell it out I'm going to spell it out so I say so I was there and a body of mine we'd finished our fucking drinks right finished the drinks

and one of the lads was like I'm mad for COCK fucking mad for COCK so he asked me and I go look I don't I don't do that that's not my thing I wouldn't know where you could get it and he goes fuck I'm mad for it and then I said

I don't know ask some bouncers maybe go to the bars and ask some bouncers I mean that's what you do when you're abroad isn't it so he starts going up to the bouncers asking for COCK. Now I'm looking at the barber and I'm not really getting the response that I'm expecting. He's a bit slower

we're cutting my fucking hair. At which point I realise you haven't been spelling out coke you've been spelling out cock. I realised this and then I said out loud. No no no

I don't mean cock I mean cocaine I was spelling it out because of the child so I'd done it all wrong now. I hadn't been subtle at all. I'd misled the fucking barber and I'd said cocaine and cock in front of a 12 year old. The child didn't seem to give a fuck. Laughter was now afoot because I spelled the word cock and I went back to continue the fucking the story anyway with the barber but a bit more whispered we'd bonded now over how ridiculous that was. So I was in Cardoba.

There were people visiting. So I was having drinks with a group. one of the lads there who I didn't know very well. We're all happy having pints and wine and this one lad has a nose on him. And he decides he wants cocaine after however many pints. But none of us are cocaine people. So he's like, have you any coke? No. Where would I get it?

Because he doesn't know the city. So we had to go just, look, go and ask a bouncer. That's what you do when you're in a city. What hope have you got? Go and ask a bouncer and they might search you out. but Cardoba isn't really that type of city so even when he went to the bouncers this was an Irish lad

even when he went to the fucking bouncers the bouncers were like no like it's around but you're not really gonna you're not gonna get it in nightclubs and shit like that it's just not that type of place but like it's around so this fella

I think he was from awfully he wasn't giving up I imagine he had possibly a bit of a problem. One of these people, if they have a certain amount of pints and they get it into their heads that they want coke,

then they are getting coke. Goes back to the bouncers. Where is it? I need to get it. Just tell me where I can get the coke. The bouncers look at each other. Then they write down a neighbourhood,

just a neighbourhood on a piece of paper. And they say, look, if you're going to get it, you'll probably get it here. But it's 10 o'clock at night and they say, area, it's not really safe. But if you must, that's where you should go. It was an area of Cordoba called Sector Soar, which is, you know, poverty, crime, you know the crack.

Big tower blocks. It's the big housing estate where the gangs are that have the cocaine. So this mad con from awfully walks up to this neighborhood where the bouncers had basically said, look here's the address this is where it is but be careful you know watch out going in there so this fella has courage

from however many points and just wanders into the fucking neighbourhood and after about 10 minutes he's approached by all the boys with the huddies just hard cunts the same as you'd find in limerick

same as you'd find in Dublin they're there in Spain as well little gangs of hard cunts who are selling drugs and then he just says cocaine cocaine so those little lads make a phone call and then what happens

is the lads say to this fella from awfully this drunk awfully fella come on with us come on with us the fella with the cocaine wants to see you so the fella from awfully he gets brought to this tower block into the elevator up to the top

and who's there is like the loke, the kingpin, the top of the drugs gang, the number one. And he goes into this fella's apartment and the dude in the apartment speaks a bit of English and basically he's like, I wanted to meet the man. I wanted to meet the man who had the courage to walk into the neighbourhood in the middle of the night by himself because everyone always says don't come into this neighbourhood, stay away from it. And the awfully fella is like, I just wanted a bit of coke,

I just wanted a bit of coke. And the big, big drug dealer fella, because look, what do you want? Offily fella says, 100 euro. And then the drug dealer fella takes the 100 euro and then hands the awfully fella, this little perfect brick of like pure crystal coke.

Now, I know nothing about cocaine, but this was what comes off the boat from South America. before it's cut and it was the private stash and the dealer gave the fella from awfully this. He leaves the apartment and then all the young, the young little gang members are cheering him and thrilled and getting photographs with the weird Irish fellow who had the courage to walk into their neighbourhood looking for coke. And that man then I believe destroyed the rest of the holiday.

For the lads that he was over with destroyed the rest of the holiday and spent all his time in his hotel room doing the pure coke, literally just sitting in a chair, drinking, listening to music on a Bluetooth speaker and doing pure coke. I'm not into coke. Apparently that's what it is. I mean, listen, have you ever met a person? Have you ever met anyone who has given you a convincing reason to do coke? Who has described an enjoyable time with coke?

Like literally no one. It's like apparel sprits. It's just, why am I buying this again Friday night? What am I doing? Coke. I fucking hate it. I hate it. It wasn't good last week.

I said I wasn't going to do it. Here I am. I'm buying another bag. That's every person I've ever spoken to about cocaine. That's their experience. Like your man who got that break. It's not like, oh, he went out and partied. No, he sat in a fucking deck chair drinking cans for an entire weekend.

And the coke allowed him to continue with the cans for, 70 hours or whatever. Anyway, the barber loved this story. Absolutely fucking loved it. Roar and laughing. Actually, this is my second barbershop and cocaine direct experience because if you remember,

about two years ago, I used to go to a barbershop. It's not even there anymore. I went to a barbershop where it was a cocaine dealing front. I used to go there because the lads were so rude that just wouldn't talk to you at all.

They just cut your fucking hair. And then the manager The manager used to come in wearing shorts in April And his legs would be cold And he'd stick the hairdraer down his balls Beside you when you were getting your fucking haircut And then the lads used to all fight with each other Anyway this new nice barber

Who couldn't wash my hair because of his hand He loved this story He loved the story about the coke and the Spain I'd succeeded in That's very relational stuff there That's how you have a conversation That's how you build relationships with a stranger you've just met

Find common ground You see the hairdresser When the hairdresser said I'm going to the Canary Islands right But I'm not that interested in Las Palmas Because the lad's pushing the coke It's a bit hard He's letting me know

I'm not that type of person And I got to respond With a I have a similar type of story That relates to your experience That also lets you know That I'm not that type of person and there's your little nautypical bonding.

And then when I had him on side, I went, look, please, can you tell me what the fuck the barber's hand is? And then he relaxes and he goes, look, just sometimes what happens is if you're cutting a customer's hair, sometimes their hairs, in particular the really small ones, they lodge into the skin between your fingers. And after every day you check and you pull them out

but sometimes you miss them. and when they do occasionally, it can start to like grow out of your skin and get red and infected and that's what happened to me. I'm after getting an abscess. So I have it covered up. So I'm like, wow, this is utterly fascinating. And then he says, do you want a coffee? And I've never been offered a coffee in there before, which means that my neurotypical conversation had gone very well. I'm being offered a coffee so I said, yes, I'll have a coffee. And when he went for the fucking coffee. I whip out my phone and start looking up Barber's hand and I start looking it up and looking up photographs of it. And it looks like serious business. Very, very painful. But yeah,

it's an occupational disease. I'm fascinated by occupational diseases and occupational illnesses. Afflictions that are specific to people who work in specific occupations because you can kind of trace capitalism with it. You can trace the abuse of human beings in the service of profit by observing occupational injuries. But the barber's hand, it's also known as a pile an idle sinus. It happens to barbers and not hairdressers because of the short hairs. So barbers are dealing with very, very short hairs and sometimes they stick in the webbing in between the barber's fingers and they lodge into the skin

and often barbers, yes, they have to pull them out at the end of the day and if they're not pulled out they can form an abscess an incredibly painful abscess and that's what this barber was dealing with and apparently it's common so he comes back with the coffee and then I'm going Oh God can I tell him about chimney sweep

scrawdom Is this a safe space? now that he's gotten me coffee to tell him about chimney sweep scrotum. So I say Jesus man, that's very interesting with your hand. You know, to have this

affliction that only happens to barbers. Now I don't go straight into chimney sweep scrotum. I start off soft and I say there used to be a disease years ago. It was around Bradford in

England in the late 7th And this was called wool sorters disease. Workers and factories, when they were sorting through wool for the textile industry, especially when they were starting to use the wool of animals that were being imported from South America like alpacas. The workers would get the hairs of the animals stuck in their hands. But some of these workers would die. He was a bit taken back by that. But I said some of the workers would die because.

because the animal hairs contained spores of anthrax. And it was actually through Wool Sorter's disease, that modern medicine was able to really understand what anthrax was as a bacteria and as a disease. The barber kept cutting my hair and gave me an o'rely. So he'd taken it in, but wasn't a guest at how interesting that was. You know, the first, the first ever recorded occupational disease.

like that it was actually called chimney sweep, scrawdom. And then he goes, go on. I said in the 1700s in England, it's actually quite sad in the 1700s as the Industrial Revolution expanded in cities in England. When the middle classes started to emerge from the Industrial Revolution and start to live in townhouses, they're all burning coal in their houses, but there was a tax introduced whereby you had to have multiple smaller chimneys rather than one large chimney. So houses now in the late 1700s were being built with multiple small chimneys. But what this meant, chimneys needed chimney sweeps. They needed a person who would clean that chimney.

When the industrial cities of London started to get smaller chimneys in the houses, that's when they started to hire small chimneys. children to clean those chimneys. Small working class children between the ages of three and seven. And these young boys used to go into chimneys naked. Some of these kids were orphans. So these little kids would be going into the tight chimneys. They weren't wearing clothes because it was easier to get in without clothes and their whole bodies were becoming covered in soot. They used to get tattoos also, involuntary tattoos, where if their bodies got cuts and scrapes in the chimneys, the soot would go under their skin and they'd be marbled with black tattoos from sut. But anyway, these kids, these little tiny children, because of repeated exposure to carcinogenic, such, and also the fact that poor hygiene, they wouldn't have been, they'd have been bathing maybe once a year.

The soot used to collect around the folds of their testicles and they would develop carcinoma, cancer of the scrotum and the skin of the testicle. And that was the first ever recorded occupational injury, occupational disease, a specific disease that happens a person because they are working in a certain occupation. And then the barber said, What does that have to do with my hand? and I said Jesus, this is lovely coffee

Do you like the coffee that they have over in Spain? And he said, yeah, it's all right and I didn't follow up with my my fact about Spanish coffee beans which is that Spanish coffee beans are tarifacto.

They're really shitty coffee beans that are roasted in sugar and that's why they have that very specific bitter taste. He didn't get that fact. I did not bestow that fact upon him because he didn't see the connection between chimney's

sweep scrawtham and his barber's hand. That's not a critique. This is a person whose means of communication is relational. And then later on tonight he's going to go home and talk to his fucking girlfriend and have a nice relational conversation about there was a fella there in work today who kept talk, who spelt out the word cock in front of a child and then spoke about the cancerous testicles of Victorian children. All I was trying to do is cut his hair.

when the haircut was finished, I looked into the mirror and said to myself in my head, thanks for that man, you made my head look like an Airbnb in the Canary Islands, just what I wanted. So that's all I have time for this week. I actually wanted to do, this was going to be a mental healthy episode because I wanted to speak about occupational, ailments, not just the physical ailments of an occupation, but the emotional ailments that can fall upon a person depending on your occupation. But we might come back to that next week. I'm off up to the Abbey Theatre tomorrow to look at some rehearsals for the play that's being made from my short stories, animals, which is going to run in the Abbey the end of September,

I think for six weeks. I'm very excited about how it's going to develop. So I'll catch you next week. And in the meantime, wink at a swan, drinking apparel spritz. You know, but sheer fucking coincidence, but only an hour ago,

the main apparel spritz drinking venue in Limerick fucking shut down. There was a lovely kind of nightclub slash bar on the river in Limerick City like a really lovely location not only was it on the river

but it used to get the evening sun place called House Limerick and it's after shutting down with 60 jobs gone and that's where people used to drink their apparel spritzes in Limerick you'd have tables full of people wonderful evening sun

sitting by the decking looking at the river drinking their apparel spritses and now that's fucking gone it's just it's one of those places that we you take it out of the city, it could cause a collapse and it was always busy too. It's when you see a business shutting down and it's always fucking busy. So it's just so disappointing that you had a lovely bar that people used to, it changed the

it changed the drinking culture of Limerick. Like Ireland is Europe but we don't really use outdoor spaces the way that people do on continental Europe. we have lots of people in Limerick from like Brazil, Argentina, Chile, people from South and Central America who understand how to use outdoor spaces. And those people, they used to do a lot of drinking, eating and partying on the fucking river at that bar that's now closed. And it showed Limerick how to enjoy our public spaces because that's not part of our... That's not our thing. Our thing is you stay inside the pub or you have the beer garden, but we don't enjoy our

outdoor spaces because of the shit weather. So it's a huge loss and 60 jobs gone. It's like someone gave Limerick City a head button broke its nose. It's up there because that's our riverfront. No, there's nothing on the riverfront. But Costalos is reopening. If you're a long-term listener of this podcast, you know that I used to go to a weird nightclub in Limerick City back in 2019 called Costalos.

which is it's a dive bar, it's a dive nightclub, it's the type of place. You cannot replicate it, you can't copy it, it is what it is. A dark strange nightclub run by a fella called Flan Costello, who's in his 80s now I think, five euro to get in the door, sticky carpets, very dark. The only music they play would be Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and most importantly with Costalo's, it didn't matter what age, you were, it just, you just had to be weird. That was it.

So you could be 19 or you could be 90 and that was completely acceptable. It was one of those fucking spaces. It shot in 2020 during the pandemic and now it's reopening six years later and as good as fucking seven years later. In October, the smoking area is this fucking weird cage. Everyone's glad to see it back but I don't know how they're, going to do it. Traditionally, Costalos was an art college place, but seven years is a long time. You go to college for four years. So there's no students in the Limerick City Art College

who've ever gone to Costello's fucking nightclub. So the culture, the culture of Costalos is going to have to be artificially reintroduced to Limerick School of Art and Design. So if you're a student of Limerick Art College and you're listening to this podcast, or you're about to go go into Limerick Art College. Learn about Costellos and its long tradition and association with the Art College and go to it when it opens in October. Look at that now and doing an ad for Costello's nightclub and tell an apparel sprits to go fuck itself. All right, dog bless.

Wink at a swan. Jane you flick to a warm. Blow kisses at a wasp.