Grandmother's Potatoes

 We recently had some crazy fits with local buses, something went wrong with the display control systems on Limerick and Clare bus Eireann buses. 

The funniest and most commented was the 343 becoming the 4343, people talked about the Twilight Zone. 

I was going through a tough time with the commute and so on and wasn't so amused, and commented that the newly returning students from further afield would be very confused. 

Then I caught an even funnier bus destination and I don't know if it was deliberate but the driver was falling about when I got photos. A 305/A local cross-town service terminated on Patrick Street, reading 'Sligo via Dublin', my friend commented that this was a very confused bus among all the confused buses with incorrect number, more so that he was reading '304A' and he definitely wasn't in the right place to be that either.

The most famous bus destination sign in Limerick is 'Grandmother's Potatoes', a local joke which baffles visitors. I remember having a terrible day and cheering up when I saw it. It reminds us of the lighter side of life.

In 2014, Limerick was City of Culture, and a theatre troupe came to town and did a sketch called 'Grandmother's Breakfast', a local bus, full of potatoes, 4 tons, I think, was part of the sketch, and bus drivers never forget it, and remind us of it occasionally.

Limerick is a special and quirky place, we have Grandmother's Potatoes. We also have people having romances with postboxes, and this features heavily in some of my work. We recently looked at expanding on this, with a murder mystery and a comedy.

The murder mystery sees Rogue Property Tycoon Michael G. Tierney, brutally murdered, with the postbox as the only witness, and the comedy is 'The Observations of a Limerick Postbox' where the postbox sees everything, from the Ornamental Gardai scrolling their phones to Stuart with his egg fried rice - sorry Stu, couldn't resist, and the romantic liaisons the postbox has, and of course the confidential information it eats as well as various other objects that people rudely place in its mouth. 

It's a misty Saturday morning in Limerick, the first mist of the season, and I'm enjoying rare peace and quiet and rest for once. Beautiful. Christmas films, haha. 

Music

 I was playing the piano at Limerick Colbert. 

There's a piano there, and like most pianos in stations, it advertisers a piano sale and repair outlet, but it's out of tune. I promise I didn't try my ukulele tuner on it. I hate the uke tuner, I tune every play and yet somehow uke 2 is so out of tune it's flatlining each time on two strings.

Cord changes, cord changes, hard on my injured hand. 

I was playing 'Ode to Joy' on the piano, and then I moved on to the LCETB anthem 'God bless us everyone' Alan Menken not the other one. It's because I had it on headphone and really wanted to play it, and so I did. I love music so much.

Yeah, music is life, I painstakingly took up music again after so much physical and mental anguish that I lost the physical and intellectual ability. 

As I sit and write, I'm listening to 'Snows of New York', my life is a sound track, and this one is a sad memory, about the Boss Man who died. The leader of the White Hats fell on the battlefield. 

Someone really helped me with that recently. They told me he chose to make the sacrifices he made, just as I chose to reach out and prevent two suicides, and he and I in humanity, did the same thing. It helped. 

The song following on is 'A place in the choir' best sung by the comedic and lovely Celtic Thunder. It reminds me of my days up at St Patrick's Road in Limerick, a grim time but with highlights. 

So what is being a student like now? I don't know, not deeply inspiring, but okay. I'm sitting in the smelliest library in the world to write this. It smells like someone tracked dog poo in.

Snow in August

 I recently created a new blog about the man who played with my life, took my data and left me on the streets of Limerick.

He's been making a public spectacle of himself and reminding me that he would kill without conscience because his self help programme and awry psychology enables him to reframe things to absolve himself.

This is the new blog: https://thestorybehindlifeforce198.blogspot.com/

Sad News

Yesterday I heard that someone had died. The obituary didn't say how, but it would have been by taking his life or by self-neglect as he wouldn't eat or drink a lot of the time. 

May the deceased rest in eternal peace and may his loved ones know peace and comfort. 

A year ago that person asked me to help him to take his life. 

It was a terrifying and stressful time a year ago, he'd tried to get the means to take his life, and couldn't.
Sadly although he meant it, his friends brushed it off and said 'He's always doing that, ignore him' but I couldn't, so I, with no experience of mental health teams and so on, managed to persuade them that he wouldn't speak by phone or call out to them as he was a recluse and in despair. 

Although they called out, took action, worked with him, it wasn't possible to give him a spark, a reason to want to live, but I entrusted it to them as I would be gone and they are professionals and took the matter seriously, credit to them, their human and concerned approach was appreciated. I was included as if I was a family member, both by them and by him, but while I was there he was open that he wanted to die, and nothing, not friends, not activities, nothing in his life gave him something he wanted to live for.

This is what I wrote at the time: 

https://lifeforce198.blogspot.com/2025/08/its-hard-to-know-what-to-do-when-youre.html

As a result of this and the other suicide mentioned, and my sister's suicidal behaviour when I was young, I went on to train in suicide prevention and other mental health topics, so a legacy of the recently deceased is that I can help others who are in distress. I am very glad that Limerick has two dedicated and compassionate suicide prevention teams who patrol the Shannon edges, they help many people, but a person can decide to take their life anywhere and not always with advance warning that others notice. 

God rest his soul. Sleep well, brother, I know it was so tough and you hurt so much every day and waited because you felt that was all you could do, but your friends will miss you a lot. 

I am sorry to say that I still wont always say the right thing or word things correctly, I am human, and I am struggling myself although not suicidal, as the man who left me on the streets of Limerick two years ago is doing a prolonged faux celebrity stunt run in the press which disrupts my life and work, he's been at it since March, and he's using a long dead politician who was as bad as himself as a prop for that. 

We all have mental health and a need for support, and for me this is particularly difficult as people who have abused me, including the man who left me on the streets of Limerick, used 'Mental health' as a term to try to excuse what they did to me because of my reaction, so the term still traumatises me and makes seeking help hard. But we all have mental and physical health, and in the current climate, getting help can be hard. My late friend had stopped seeking help because he didn't find help that helped, he'd stopped talking because no one heard him. 

I am fortunate in having a good boss and several friends who I can be open with about my distress, about the shock of yesterday's news, it's important to talk, so please do. 

A clumsy prose in memory:

https://castletroywords.blogspot.com/2026/08/goodnight-brother.html

Air on a G-String

Good evening. I hope you're okay. This blog isn't being written as and when I'd envisioned but never mind.

Let me tell you about my day. 

It's my day off from work and I fell out of bed sleepy after a tough week. I had an exam at 9 am and I thought I was doing fine and would be all set. It was an online exam, due last week and delayed. 

I went to set up, my laptop crashed and the other one isn't the right spec. I fought to get the laptop working and it started, and then decided to install updates. 

I was seething as I logged in in danger of losing my exam because of the time. The proctor knows me and is the most patient person in the world so he told me to stay calm, and he helped me set up.

If I'd taken the exam last week it would have been 100% but I got 85% this time. Which is better than being disqualified. Many thanks to a really good proctor who has calmed me down before.

One of my next adventures was very Limerick. I recently acquired my second ukulele but it needed re-stringing, so I was taking it to the music shop in town.

The one missing string was a G String. Limerick is crazy and so am I, so I wandered round town with my uke, asking people if they'd seen my G String.

In Limerick the reply would be 'Well 'oose 'ouse did you leave it to, you hun?' 

When I'd worn the joke out, I headed for the music shop. Left my new baby with them, became a music shop person properly, seeing as I was having an instrument repaired, and went for my shopping.

Later I went and collected the newly repaired instrument, and headed for my bus. I had no plectrum so I used my leap card and the bus queue giggled. 

'No busking on the bus' the driver told me sternly 'Not even Limerick you're a lady' 

At home, messaging with a friend, we were reminded of my survey a few years ago, where I walked round Limerick asking people if they were normal.

My friend commented that I had surely packed my sanity when I moved over from France, but Limerick had other ideas.

Coat Tail Riding

 It's been a long time since I wrote on this blog. I've been busy with work and study. 

This blog was 'suicide prevention, mental wellness and Limerick' and was sparked by poor treatment by the man who left me on the streets as he continued to interfere in my life, and the subsequent matching poor treatment by local homeless services which nearly made me give up in despair. 

The man who left me on the streets has delusions of being a celebrity or public figure and does weird stunts in the press. He did this recently and of course it triggered all the trauma. 

I spoke to someone and asked why he did this. He kind of glorifies dead people and shows off in obituaries columns which is very odd. Sometimes I think he's afraid of his own death and what might come out when he dies. 

I was thinking of him earlier. I was in Tipperary and I thought about him coming to see me, and each time, spending all his time on his phone and texting, which is rude to say the least, but certainly told me where I was on the scale of importance. 

Two years ago he left me having a breakdown from his behaviour. It's almost two years since I arrived in Limerick.

I asked someone about his faux celebrity stunts off the backs of other people, especially dead people. 

These are some reasons they came up with. 

1. Basking in reflected Glory, a psychology term for gaining status by associating yourself with admired or successful people. 
2. Virtue Signalling.
3. Name-dropping
4. coat tail riding
5. Self-promotion by association/image management/reputation building.
6. Hero-worshipping - a strange thing to do with dead people in public. 
7. Self-aggrandizement
8. Canonizing
9. Hagiography - this and the previous one really describe his games, he makes dead people into saintly people to get himself attention, his recent one was a notorious troublemaker politician and drunk driver who got his arresting garda dismissed from the force. 

Someone did a blog and touched on this. The blog isn't my work and does not describe the man who damaged me so much, but it's a spoof:

 Beyond Shannon Blog

The trauma of what this man did to me never really faded, because he refused to conclude or explain and walked away not just feeling no responsibility but still harming me by interfering in my life. Worse, his showing off indicates he thinks highly of himself and won't take responsibility for hurting me or others or treating the law as optional.

There's a darker element to the Dolores O'Riorden thing, she was sexually abused by someone who may have been high profile in Limerick, and the person was never brought to justice but apparently 'apologised' to her, you can't really apologise for sexual assaulting someone when they were a child. Abusers don't abuse just once. I am curious about why the man who harmed me so badly was fascinated with O'Riorden in her death. He makes a show of rubbing shoulders with high profile locals.

He absolutely wrecked my life. I have no idea why he decided I was a toy but I was surprisingly naive and let him take me over, steal my medical data and so on. 

God bless us everyone

 Hello you all, 

Sorry I haven't been updating life force. There's always so much going on, but I will update soon. 

In the meantime, this is beautiful and not my work or copyright. I have just finished writing The Road to Shannon (at last!) and am thinking of calling the next book 'Star by Star'. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BejL7cf9bE0&list=RDBejL7cf9bE0&start_radio=1

Let the stars in the sky
Remind us of man's compassion
Let us love till we die and
God Bless us everyone

In your heart there's a light
As bright as a star in heaven
Let it shine through the night and
God bless us everyone

Till each child is fed,
Till all men are free,
Till the world becomes a family

Star by star in the sky and
Kindness by human kindness
Light this world with your love and
God bless us everyone

Till each child is fed,
Till all men are free,
Till the world becomes a family

Let the stars in the sky
Remind us of man's compassion
Let us love till we die and
God Bless us everyone