The highly inaccurate guide to Drogheda

13/05/2024

Well now, it is sad to say that sometimes history repeats itself so bad that it stinks more than 20 pints of porter, fifteen ciders and two hot curries the following day when they exit the other end.

Way back in the 30s and 40s there were a crowd of awful folk with blighted brains, dehydrated hearts and a venomous hatred for everything that they thought might lift the eyes of the world up a little so that we all stopped gazing at the stars made foul when reflected in a gutter. I am indeed talking about the far-right n**i scum that once haunted the streets of Drogheda, until the local diziens gave them their marching orders.
Sadly they're at it again, and this time they are funded by cartels and gangsters the likes of which would surprise you. Imagine hating foriegners and demanding they all be vetted, but having no problem taking money off foriegn criminals. Another word for unvetted money is laundered money, just think about it. Or then there are those who would have us cowtow to their British masters, and the criminal elements of the loyalist brigades. They want Ireland to exit Europe and are too stupid to realise that most of their supports and benifits come from Europe. They complain of harassment while directly harassing anyone who doesn't conform to there p**s stained and much deformed version of "holy Ireland".
Now sorry that this post hasn't much humour in it, because this is a post about bigoted numpties that think they are some kind of master race, they wax lyrical about the safety of women,only to attack women and children. They scream out about an invasion while they invade every nook and cranny of the world and s**t in it. You'll see them heckling peaceful vigils, or putting up s**te AI posters (even here they lack any actual creativity.) They want books banned, but whinge about cancel culture, and most of all they want you to be afraid, not free. They want your community to be overrun by thuggery so they can do whatever they want. So sorry this isn't funny, it's dangerous instead and Below this nation.

Any how just to help you out
Below is a list of all the positive actions they have ever taken part in, and all the Community work they have done also. The list is actually exhaustive, and really is all the good they have ever done

05/07/2023

Years before Shanks had his chips stolen, or the Council members ever had a motion, HIG-D was there telling it as it was, is and always will be.

It is with great saddness but also a degree of culinary excitement that The Inaccurate Guide To Drogheda announce the death of Captain Ratswing, esteemed pilot and erstwhile director of the Drogheda Swan flying core. An important figure in his own right, Ratswing was of course one of the Goodfeathers, an historic and noble family of the town, known to pearch on the banks of Boing since before the great Trolley invasion of 13th Century.

Few birds have shown greater loyalty to the cause of aviational defecation, or commitment to waste removal as he.
A long time resident of Meat Market lane, Ratswing is predeceased by most of his family who supplied Drogheda Hostileries with that famous delicacy Swan Curry, also known as Gull stew and poor mans chicken.
We would ask at this sad time that somebody supply a bag of rice and a few onions and peas in which to inter the juicy carcass of our esteemed friend.

Pictured here is Captain Ratswing, wearing the regimental flag and colours. This picture taken in 1994 when Millmount was temporarily removed for deep cleaning in the USA, reminds us of the unstinting devotion of the swan squadron to the skies and bins of Drogheds on the boing.

RIP Captain Ratswing . His likes will not be seen again...

09/12/2022

The ancient and venerable traditions of the election of the wizened elders of town and village, city and outhouse is as auld as the hills of Tullyallan. For example in a certain town to the north of us they employ a system called Dumbocracy. This requires that the dumbest of Dem gets the job to be really dumb. This is why that principality is known far and wide as Dumbdalk. Equally in the smelly quarters of Dublin, they double their numbers so they can be called a Capital city when everyone knows that Drogheda on the Boing is the true centre of Ireland, the world and indeed God's own bleeding heart. In Dublin they are governed by a king who takes an oath of allegiance to the devil himself.
Now in Drogheda the election of the chief of the elders is a complicated thing, and this proves that it's very old and works. Here we don't bother aaaksing folk who they want, sure they'd only squabble about it and pick someone they liked and not someone that the elders liked better.
The system used in Drogheda is called, according to the town ledger the "One leg shorter than the other, take a sniff of that ya mad yolk or we'll poke ya full of holes with our pointy swords (given by King Billy when he stayed in the local B&B on West street)" It is a wonderful spectacle to behold, and the purple "Paul Daniels magic set" only adds to the sense of mystery.
This ceremony is performed every year amid great celebrations and drinking. Indeed on one occasion the merriment had got so good that the soon to be Head muncho was accidentally done in by the rest and the peelers had to be called to give everyone a suitable affidavit.
Pictured here is the Election of Mayor Andrews after whom the laxative was named. He ruled for six months before anyone noticed he was a figment of the collective imagination and didn't really exist.
For those interested the smoke in the box is the collected hot air of the previous years empty promises and is said to be toxic to any but the most dedicated of principled citizens.

15/07/2022

The first ever train station was built in 100BC (Before Counting) long before train tracks, trains or time was invented. It was built of a Monday in Drogheda by some forward thinking citizens who just knew what the area needed was a great big bridge spanning the Boyne. The idea didn’t catch on and that station was burned down two days later and there is absolutely no evidence of its existence other than this paragraph.

Years later a rowdy gang of hoodlums occupied the site and built the first ever steam train, this time long before stations, tracks or accurate time keeping were invented. The steam train had no wheels, no cockpit and no overall design. It resembled a big kettle but due to a funny quirk in its design did manage to travel half a mile when it overheated and the steam caused it to achieve upwards propulsion. Sadly the event caused yet another fire and everyone died before they could share the tale until now.

The first train tracks where actually made by the Mushroom Men of Milmount (MMM), who would go on to also invent stitches, which is probably what the train tracks were. This was long before the invention of anything else, but unlike previous entries above there is evidence of this, but it is hidden under milmount in a secret vault that nobody knows about. A different theory suggests that the tracks were actually an atempt to make the first ever jigsaw puzzle, but early cartography enthusiasts mistook them for rivers and accidentally caused loads of people to die of unexplained drowning during the first ordnance survey of 1650AD.

In the early 18th century lady Serendipity shone her happy rays of inspiration upon Drogheda and Lord Balderdash, an industrious fella with a fondness for bankruptcy, almost invented the railway system. Unfortunately while he build a station, a train and even tracks, he was still way ahead of the swanky bridge. Also his train was pulled by an oversized shire horse on roller skates (hence the tracks) who sadly didn’t know the big bridge had not yet been built and met a messy end on the bottom of the Boyne ravine. This led to two important inventions though, the first was horse power and the second were roller skates (later patented by lord Withworth, space traveller and disco ball enthusiast).

We can now move on to very recent history when Zebedee, the grandson of Serendipity and Balderdash, invented the alarm clock and with it our beloved train station, train tracks, a man powered engine and the UTT (unreliable Time Table). The only thing remaining of this great innovation is the UTT which the high priests of Iarnród Éireann keep in the Tabernacle of Connolly Station, and occasionally read it out over the intercom for s**ts and giggles.
As luck would have it Zebedee managed to do all this of a Friday, just as the beautiful Viaduct was completed and five Dumbdalkins were sacrificed to the river Goddess,- Boing, to keep the bridge safe from hurricanes, Hollywood movies and woodworm. We note that as of today the sacrifices worked and consider this proof that Paganism is the way to go if you’re an environmentalist.
Sadly Zebedee died of exhaustion after he pulled the first train all the way from the boarding platform to the far side of the Viaduct. His unmarked grave can’t be found but is certainly there if you don’t look.

Anyhow below is a picture of Zebedee pulling the first ever train on its maiden voyage. Behind him is none other than Malachy Murtagh inventer on the steam engine and green paint.

03/03/2022

Today we will discuss the various superstitions of Drogheda on the Boing, in particular counting rhymes. Like most places Drogheda has the magpie counting song, however the additional lines:
"8 for a tenner, it’s nine in t***s – you get one free"
Are perhaps unique to both our Nomenclature, and our wonderful cuisine.
Another counting poem, often heard in the schoolyards and hedgerows of Drogheda is perhaps a better example of Drogheda lore. The pigeons on the tower poem goes like this;

"One pigeon and it’s sure to rain
Two pigeons and it’s still raining
Three pigeons and it’s rain again"

This poem goes all the way to 100 without even once predicting good weather.

Then there is the bin poem,

"If the bin is over full
Count the cats and rats for fun"

This little Dittie was written by a small snotty nosed child during the fleath and won him a clip on the ear from the county council.

Of course, Drogheda also has romantic rhymes, our favourite is Thee Earth counting song:

"Ladies are free until midnight
After that it’s a ticket for one admits two,
You can sneak three cans in if you're clever
The four lanterns is a good place to hang out after 2am in the morning.
If you haven’t shifted by then, I’ll marry you."

Then there is the famous Tholsel bottle song, ancient but filled with a whole flotilla of “characters” Many of whom eventually moved to the steps of St Peters forming the first bottle choir of Drogheda or anywhere else form that matter.

As there might be children present we can only mention the seagull song, often mistaken for a sea shanty but certainly not one because even sailors have standards.

Of course many if not all these rhymes were once housed in the one volume, “singing for the scraps, a Childers book of Drawda verse”, complied by JP Reilly formally of James Street.

Pictured below is the famous “The local councillors counting song ” a musical broadsheet that was very popular back in the day.

28/02/2022

St Domino Augustine Francisco of Sorrento, is of course the patron Saint of take aways. His statue adorns the old Franciscan church where it was delivered in error by a delivery man who didn't know his Augustinian from his Dominican and ended up on Laurences St because of it.

The statue itself shows the moment poor brother Domino prays to God for a wholesome meal to feed his congregation. Legend has it that God sent him some flattened bread, tomato sauce and grated cheese, but the devil in a typical self defeating gesture caused them all to melt together and lo the papist Italians of Scilly invented pizza, sin and Gluttony all in one clay oven.

Poor Domino was exiled from the kingdom and following a brief sojourn working at the Apple markets of Eden, fled to Drogheda on the Boing where he set up shop in one or other of the churches preaching god's word via his mamas secret recipe (patent pending).
For years the monkish churches of Drogheda served up hot pizza on Sundays and religious fervour sliced the land in grand sections of holy pie.
Alas the lord do give with one hand and then he Takes away. So it was that in a plan to convert the pagans and protestants to the one true faith, the holy monks added some tasty sausages to the mix, and on that one Good Friday back when the pubs still closed, the diavolo was invented and every church going Christian of the jewel of the boing took communion and thereby sent their poor souls to hell for eating meat of a fast day.

Pictured here is the aforementioned statue of St Domino of Sorrento awaiting the patent for pizza.

25/02/2022

Few ladies get to be the little lady and enjoy the rule of Thumb, but Matilda Thumb (nee Potty) did just that.
Having entered the inaugural Battle of the Boing Cup diving competition and winning the first prize of an orange, she caught the eye of one Cornelius Thumb who whisked Miss Potty off to be married that very day. The registry office was closed though, so they had to hang around. Not having watches they passed time by counting it in rough approximations of sighs, skipped heart beats, and the time it takes to peel an orange in your pocket with just one hand, thus inventing the rule of Thumb. At midnight, just as the orange was peeled and Matilda’s hand was sore, they were married and Matilda Potty became a sore Thumb.
They would go on to have more children than was good for them, and even more that weren’t good for anyone else. As often happens to celebrity couples and little people, they soon fell to squabbling over every little thing, and many of the bigger things also, not least being a ginger bread cottage Cornelius had won in a game of chance with none other than the infamous syphilitic, Annie Takers. They resided for a time in the cottage hospital, a care home for aged and otherwise sickly cottages, such as the one Cornelius now owned and didn’t want to share. It was here that Annie Takers, realising Cornelius had cheated at chance, fed him to her pet parrot, reposessed her gingerbread cottage and framed poor Matilda for the whole thing. The peelers were called and an arrest warrant was issued.
Matilda fled the scene cunningly disguised as an Orange woman and ended her days in the Tullyallen home for the mistaken, destitute and with an endless craving for apples

Here we see Matilda in happier times with her prize Orange.

23/02/2022

Pictured here is Matilda Potty, a descendant of the Dry Diving Pottys, and a latter resident of the Tullyallen home for the mistaken, where she eventually died of the combustion, a rare malediction that often besets those who guzzle petroleum regularly.

In this picture, on the grounds of Townley Hall, Matilda, following the tradition of her family, had just won first prize in the cup diving contest, a contest hosted ever year without fail from 1901-1901.
The competition was inaugurated to commemorate the legendary battle of the tea caddy, a minor skirmish between the tea ladies that attended to both sides in the battle of of boing. Nobody is at all sure what the tea caddy battle was actually about, nor which side won. Although from all the shards of fine china found to this day in the fields surrounding the area, it must have cost a fortune in broken delft, and other counterfeit porcelain from Holland.

For those interested, the first prize in the cup diving contest was an orange.

20/02/2022

Dry diving, perhaps the most extreme of sports first evolved in the Town of Monopoli, Italy. Monopoli was once famous for it’s cliff diving, however smaller divers were constantly being eaten by Mediterranean fish and impaled on sea urchins, so they created their own sport which involved taking the dangerous water out of diving and replacing it with far more dangerous terra firma. The sport was eventually banned across the world, with the exception of Baltray, where the fad remained highly popular among some folk living in the environs of Drogheda on the Boing.
Such was the popularity of this craze that Giselle and Gepetto Potty travelled all the way here on the back of an escapee mange ridden parrot that had fled from a pirate ship, just to compete. They of course won, and would later also enter the tide staring contest and sadly lose by way of drowning. Their children would go on to live in the dark woods of Townley hall and eek out a living catching colds and selling them to quack doctors and new romantic poets.
The parrot of course would gain notoriety when it took up with Annie Takers who at this time had a wooden leg, swore like a sailor and like the pirate parrot had the mange.

Giselle and Gepetto Potty shortly before the tides changed, Baltray Beach circa 1891 or so.

15/02/2022

Yet again our researchers have outdone themselves, and the box of pictures we found in the dump continues to yield history gold.

Here we see Captain Waddington famous toy maker and creator of Beaulieu World theme park walking his dog on the banks of the Boing. In the background you can see the early stages of the construction of the Viaduct. With Captain Waddington is General Stores his close friend.
Of course the general is best remembered these days as a founder member of Woolworths on West st, along with Corporal Woolford and Sergeant Pennyworth, who sat out the war of independence holed up in Milmount where they survived on a diet of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed, whilst sipping Pimm’s listening to the BBC World service on the old bicycle powered valve radio (still housed in the museum, and further proof of this stories authenticity).
When peace broke out nobody knew what to do with them, and the government decided it was best to just give them a business grant and hope for the best. Sadly they squandered their wealth on cheap imitation fashion items and chipped jubilee cup sets, all sold at below market value to hard working mums and their shop lifting childer.

11/02/2022

Following much interest in our piece about Tiny Tim, we have decided to share this second picture.
We noted that many folks appeared to question our rigourous research methods and even the veracity of our account. In response to this we share this photo of the entire Thumb family collecting logs in Beaulieu wood.
Indeed the wise among you will know full well that Captain Waddington, master of the old house was the inventer of children's contraptions, toys and other things for adults to trip over, snub their toes, or play with on the sly.
What few realise is that the grand Captain created the first Train set, not as a toy but as a gift to the Thumbs, to recognise their lifelong commitment to chopping down that one small tree.
While nothing of the train set remains, this picture found in a box confirms their early career as lumberjacks.

06/02/2022

Tiny Tim of Thomas St, Son of Tom and Thimbelina Thumb, famed models for wedding cake figurines, and stunt doubles for King Brian during the filming of Darby O'Gill, had a strange if eventful life.
Soon after his parents were eaten by a stray cat, the county council reprocessed the Doll House at the bottom of some garden and Tim was left homeless. Not the kind of fella to let this stop him, he soon moved into the Clock tower of the Tholsel, and would squat there for ages. It was during this time that he became famous as the tiny tinkerer of time, who would on most days cause great trouble by turning the minute hand of the clock back ten minutes so the alarm wouldn't wake him to early. Indeed he performed this stunt so often that the clock of the Tholsel ended up out of time not by minutes, but by years. To this day the clock tells the time from at least two years ago and few if any depend on it for an accurate measure of the hour.
It was also during this time that the illicit trade in clock parts; cogs, wheels and the larger numerals was first noted up in the market. Although it was never proven, many believe that he was indeed the culprit. To this day (well this day two years ago according to the Tholsel) many a Drog will plead to do local Time with the magistrate, and hope for a shorter sentence because our grand old clock has only twelve hours in a day and not the full twenty four that others have.

Pictured her is Tiny Tim, allegedly cleaning the windows of the Tholsel around the time half the day went missing. He was evicted soon after and ended his days shacked up with a cookoo in Blavaria.