I bought a Holga 135BC on ebay for $30 including shipping from Hong Kong. I loaded it up with 400 speed colour film and played around with it last week, with mixed results.

First lesson I learned is that even if it’s a clear and sunny winter’s day in Ireland, set the aperture to Cloudy, not to Sunny. It seems that an Irishman’s concept of what a sunny day is may not be the same as someone from fairer climes. A lot of shots were underexposed to the point of being what even the most amateur photographer like myself would call “complete fucking shit.”

Managed to salvage a couple. All hinges should be designed like this one.

This was taken using the Bulb setting, shutter held open for about two/three seconds. Looks like it might prove to be an intersting option to have.

These were taken on an overcast day with the aperture set to Cloudy.

Great camera; cheap, extremely light, immense fun to use, and the fact that you look like a leering sex-pest while wielding it in the park can only add to it’s appeal.

Hiking in the Wicklow Mountains with the brother last Monday, we spotted this impressive cairn atop Seefin.

The entrance faces directly north.

Apparently it was opened up and examined in 1932/33 but whatever remains it once contained had already been pilfered.

Also spotted this escapee from The Quatermass Experiment …

I had an afternoon to kill in Dublin last week so went along to the WB Yeats exhibition at the National Library.

Some remarkable objects on display…

Samples of Yeats’s automatic writing.

Samples from his notebooks.

His elemental weapons, made while an “Adeptus Minor” in The Hermetic Order Of The Golden Dawn. Pentacle, Dagger, Wand and Cup.

Yeats was a member alongside Aleister Crowley (before Crowley was more or less chucked out following a great power struggle). Crowley fancied himself as a bit of a poet too and looking up my old copy of his Confessions has yielded some excellent quotes about Yeats…

“I remember one curious incident in connection with this volume. I had a set of paged proofs in my pocket one evening, when I went to call on W. B. Yeats. I had never thought much of his work; it seemed to me to lack virility. I have given an extended criticism of it in The Equinox (vol. I No. II, page 307). However, at that time I should have been glad to have a kindly word from an elder man. I showed him the proofs accordingly and he glanced through them. He forced himself to utter a few polite conventionalities, but I could see what the truth of the matter was.

I had by this time become fairly expert in clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience. But it would have been a very dull person indeed who failed to recognize the black, billious rage that shook him to the soul. I instance this as a proof that Yeats was a genuine poet at heart, for a mere charlatan would have known that he had no cause to fear an authentic poet. What hurt him was the knowledge of his own incomparable inferiority.

I saw little of him and George Moore. I have always been nauseated by pretentiousness; and the Celtic revival, so-called, had all the mincing, posturing qualities of the literary Plymouth Brother.”

and…

“There was one literary light, W. B. Yeats, a lank dishevelled demonologist who might have taken more pains with his personal appearance without incurring the reproach of dandyism…”

I’m almost certain I remember reading that Yeats later described Crowley as a “poet of merit.” But I can’t find the quote.

You can read one of Crowley’s earliest collections of poetry, White Stains, published under the pseudonym George Archibald Bishop and is full of thinly veiled erection metaphors like “My Gigantic Charms” here.

When I was a boy my Dad used to tell a ghost story of sorts about the Irish Hellfire Club. It always stuck with me and so a couple of weeks ago my oldest bother, Gerry, and myself took the short hike up Montpellier Hill in the Dublin Mountains to take a look at what is left of the club.

The story my Dad told concerned a group of wealthy types who used the club for drinking, gambling and sometimes, when particularly bored, conducting the odd satanic ritual.  One night while they were playing cards there was a knock on the door.  When it was opened they were met with an old man seeking shelter from the storm that raged outside. They let him in and he warmed himself by the fire and then sat down for a couple of hands. He soon began to win and with each successive game his pile of money grew larger.  One of the wealthy types dropped his cards then, and when he reached down and pushed the long table cloth back to retrieve them he saw to his horror that the visitor was in possession of a large cloven hoof complete with hairy leg.

There was a bit of ballyhoo then, screams and such, and as the devil went about his work he laughed so hard that he blew the roof off the building. Flaming logs fell from the hearth, tapestries blazed, aristocrats died roaring and the legend of the Irish Hellfire Club was born. Years later, when the club was rebuilt, the roof was constructed in the style of a bridge’s arch, each stone interlocking with its cousins to form an incredibly strong structure. The roof still stands today.

I’ve heard the same story from other people too, and there are other, somewhat different stories about the Hellfire Club, many featuring a black cat. The cloven hoof story has also been attached to Loftus Hall in CountyWexford where the devil is said to have appeared in similar circumstances, in that case he disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

Below, the woods at the foot of Montpellier Hill.

.

Front of the club, looking down on Dublin.  Most dates list it as being built around 1725.

.

Rear of the club, with me for scale (I’m six foot).

.

Rear of the club including a Neolithic (4500-2000BC) passage tomb surrounded by a stone circle.  One of the stones would have stood in the space which the room with the semi-circular window now occupies.  It is said that the missing stone was incorporated into the stonework of the building, furthering the “cursed building” legend.

.

Here’s a screenshot from google maps showing the intersection of the stone circle and the room at the rear of the building.

.

Inside there are three imposing fireplaces and about a dozen large niches which must have at one point held statues.  The council have put in a concrete stairs and box-iron handrails so you can go up to the second floor without breaking your neck.

.

Broken obelisk at the rear of the building.

.

It’s an interesting and lonely place, well worth a visit even if only for the incredible views of Dublin.  There are plenty of Dutch Gold (lager popular with Irish bums, dirt cheap but tastes almost literally like piss) cans lying around inside and some graffiti, although not as much as you would expect.

Some more images on my flickr page.

And the guys at Blather have some info, including the Loftus Hall/Hellfire Club crossover.

Also some interesting background info and short video here.